Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

BRITISH TRANSPORT COMMISSION BILL (By Order)

Consideration, as amended, deferred till Thursday.

BUDE-STRATTON URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL [Lords] (By Order)

Read a Second time and committed.

SCOTTISH AMERICAN INVESTMENT COMPANY LIMITED ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL

Read the Third time and passed.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRADE AND COMMERCE

Overseas Trade

Mr. Ellis Smith: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will publish in the OFFICIAL REPORT an extension of the figures contained in Table 18 of his

EXPORTS OF MANUFACTURES1


(percentage share in brackets)


£ million








1938
1950
1955


United Kingdom
…
…
…
…
…
354 (22·1)
1,828 (25·6)
2,388 (19·7)


Germany, F.R.2
…
…
…
…
…
363 (22·7)
521 (7·3)
1,875 (15·4)


France
…
…
…
…
…
104 (6·5)
709 (9·9)
1,128 (9·3)


Italy
…
…
…
…
…
46 (2·8)
276 (3·9)
410 (3·4)


Netherlands
…
…
…
…
…
50 (3·1)
218 (3·0)
464 (3·8)


United States3
…
…
…
…
…
320 (20·1)
1,951 (27·3)
2,972 (24·5)


Japan
…
…
…
…
…
105 (6·6)
246 (3·4)
624 (5·1)


1Exports from the countries shown of goods in Section 5 to 8 of the Standard International Trade Classification.


2A11 Germany pre-war.


3Excluding exports of Special Category goods in post-war years.

Report on Overseas Trade, Vol. XI, No. 4, which relate to exports of manufactures from the United Kingdom, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, the United States of America and Japan, so as to cover the years 1900, 1925, 1935, 1950 and 1955.

The President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Reginald Maudling): Figures of world trade in manufactures in 1938, 1950 and 1955 will be circulated in the OFFICIAL REPORT. Those for certain earlier periods have been estimated unofficially and published in The Manchester School of Economic and Social Studies for September, 1951.

Mr. Ellis Smith: Will the right hon. Gentleman convey to the statistical department and those who prepare the Board of Trade Journal our appreciation of the continuance and improvement of the information provided? Has he seen the publications issued by the G.E.C. and the recent supplement published by Barclays Bank on these matters, and will he consider further improvements in order that greater interest in exports may be stimulated?

Mr. Maudling: I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for what he says about the statistical work of the Board of Trade. What is done there is extremely good, and it is only too seldom that those concerned are told so in public. We are glad at any time to consider possible improvements.

Following is the information:

Mr. Ellis Smith: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will invite to a meeting the firms in each industry which are engaged in the manufacture of our principal exports, and ask for their proposals on how to bring about a large increase in exports, the pooling of resources, the formation of central, economic and marketing research for each export industry and the formation of industrial consortia in order to assist in a greatly increased export trade.

Mr. Maudling: The Minister of State, who devotes the greater part of his time to export promotion, is holding a series of meetings with representatives of industries to consider what more can be done by industry and by Government to increase our exports. Whether the specific measures the hon. Member suggests would benefit exports depends on the particular circumstances.

Mr. Ellis Smith: Contained in the Question are certain constructive suggestions. If the President of the Board of Trade cannot accept them, will he consider working out some of his own so that we may make preparations for the great effort which will be required in the struggle for world markets in the future?

Mr. Mandling: I share the hon. Gentleman's concern about the importance of our export trade, but the Minister of State is having a series of meetings with individual industries about export problems. Suggestions of the sort contained in the hon. Gentleman's Question will certainly come up for consideration in the course of discussions.

Mr. C. Osborne: In the drive for exports, will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that it is dangerous to encourage the sale of our exports more cheaply abroad than at home because, in the long run, we lose if we sell too low abroad in order merely to increase exports?

Mr. Mandling: The practice to which my hon. Friend refers sounds very much like dumping, which, of course, is very reprehensible, but I think that in many trades the practice of selling abroad below the home market price is fairly prevalent and it is difficult for us to fail to take part in the same practice, although I quite see the point made by my hon. Friend.

Development Assistance (North-East Region)

Mr. Boyden: asked the President of the Board of Trade how many applications for assistance under the Local Employment Act for development in the North-East have resulted from his circularisation of business firms.

Mr. Maudling: There have been so far sixteen preliminary applications for assistance under the Local Employment Act for development in the North-East. In addition, there have been about 150 inquiries from firms which appear to be interested.

Mr. Boyden: Where does the Board of Trade get the figure of 10,000 jobs in the future recently given to Durham County Council? In my constituency, there has been only one I.D.C. issued since the Local Employment Act was passed, and there are still 2,000 people out of work. When is some of the development likely to take place in the North-East and in my constituency in particular?

Mr. Maudling: If the hon. Gentleman will put that dawn as a Question, I shall be glad to answer on the detail. The general figures we give from the Board of Trade of prospective jobs are based on firm applications for I.D.Cs.

Mr. Chetwynd: Can the right hon. Gentleman say how many of these applications are from firms within the area wishing to expand and how many represent genuine efforts from people outside to come into the area?

Mr. Maudling: Not without notice. With notice, I shall be glad to supply the answer.

Decimal System

Mrs. Slater: asked the President of the Board of Trade what consideration he has given to the joint report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association of British Chambers of Commerce on the conversion of weights and measures to the decimal system.

Mr. Maudling: I am considering this very interesting report.

Mrs. Slater: Does not the right hon. Gentleman think that the numerous reports which have been issued on this


subject over the years, and, in particular, that part of the Hodgson Report which deals with it, suggest that it is now time that some decision should be taken quickly in the interests of trade and of easier teaching in our schools?

Mr. Maudling: These axe exceedingly difficult questions which have been discussed publicly for a century or more. As there have been only a few days since the last report came out, I hope we may be given more time to consider it. These are the sort of things upon which informed public discussion and comment are particularly useful.

Mr. Lipton: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that public opinion is very well informed on this matter already, and even better informed than the Government, and does he not agree that the time has now come to introduce the decimal system?

Mr. Maudling: I think the hon. Member is arrogating to himself a greater knowledge of public opinion than I would be prepared to do.

British Standards Institution (Consumer Work)

Mrs. McLaughlin: asked the President of the Board of Trade what money is made available to the British Standards Institution for consumer work.

Mr. Maudling: For 1960–61, the British Standards Institution will receive a special grant of £10,000 as a contribution towards the cost of its work for the domestic consumer. In so far as the remaining cost of that work is not covered by subscriptions from Associates of the Consumers' Advisory Council, it will be met from the general resources of the Institution, to which the Government will contribute this year a grant of £160,000.

Mrs. McLaughlin: Does not the Minister think that this is an occasion for expanding and giving a much larger grant to the British Standards Institution for this particular work, because at this time there is a great expansion in the work on consumer standards, and a great deal of knowledge and publicity ought to be put across, and money will be needed for it? Will the right hon. Gentleman consider any further grant that may be needed?

Mr. Maudling: The Government's contribution, in fact, is larger than ever before. I think that, important as the objectives are, one must set some limit to what the Government can do, and hope that contributions will also be forthcoming, as they are, from other sources.

Carpets (Grading and Labelling)

Mrs. McLaughlin: asked the President of the Board of Trade what progress has been made with regard to grading and accurate labelling of carpets.

Mr. Maudling: I am informed that the British Standards Institution hopes to be able to issue before long an agreed recommendation for the informative labelling of carpets, and that proposals for a grading system are being pursued by the Institution.

Mrs. McLaughlin: May I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply? It is very important, since the breakdown of retail price maintenance, that the grading of carpets should be well and truly understood by the public. I thank my right hon. Friend for his interest in this matter.

Mr. Maudling: I think the B.S.I. is doing a very good job in connection with this, as it is on so many other jobs.

Local Employment Act

Mr. Loughlin: asked the President of the Board of Trade (1) if he will now consider amending the provisions of the Local Employment Act to enable assistance to be given to small firms which wish to transfer production or expand in areas of high unemployment or possible high unemployment but which are not designated as development districts under the terms of the Act;
(2) if he will now consider amending the provisions of the Local Employment Act to enable those Sections relating to the provision of basic services and improvement of amenities to apply to areas where a high level of unemployment is possible but where the area is not included in the list of development districts.

Mr. Maudling: No, Sir.

Mr. Loughlin: Does not the Minister think that, on the basis of his existing


experience, it is possible to look very sympathetically at amending legislation where one sees the need for it, without giving what I consider a most contemptible reply to a Question aimed at helping areas that need employment? Does he not also agree that, provided that the small firms are economically sound, he might well at this juncture partly solve the unemployment problem in some of the development areas if he could give this assistance?
If I may now deal with Question No. 10, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he realises that many areas where unemployment is likely to develop, and particularly the older areas, are such that they cannot possibly attract industries in the future unless the basic services that are necessary for those industries are laid down?

Mr. Maudling: I appreciate the hon. Member's concern, but the House has just passed a new Measure in which certain inducements and certain general benefits are available to places that satisfy the criteria in the Section of the Act, and I think that to add to that a whole list of places that do not satisfy those criteria would be completely contrary to the purpose of the House in passing the recent Measure.

Mr. Jay: Is the President of the Board of Trade quite sure that he has included all the areas which do satisfy these criteria?

Mr. Maudling: That is, of course, an entirely different matter.

Mr. Loughlin: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the right hon. Gentleman's reply, I beg to give notice that I desire to raise the matter on the Motion for the Adjournment at the earliest possible moment.

Atomic Energy Authority (Chemical)

Mr. Warbey: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will refer to the Monopolies Commission the terms and conditions under which a chemical required by the Atomic Energy Authority and referred to in the Comptroller and Auditor General's Report on the Authority's balance sheet is supplied by the sole manufacturers thereof.

Mr. Maudling: My right hon. Friend the Minister of Education informed the

House on 12th May that he understood that the Public Accounts Committee would shortly have the opportunity of hearing evidence on the Comptroller and Auditor General's Report from the Accounting Officer for the Atomic Energy Vote and the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Authority. When the Committee's Report is available, I shall consider whether any action on my part would be appropriate.

Mr. Warbey: Before I put my supplementary question, Mr. Speaker, may I raise with you a point of order and seek your guidance on two points? First of all, as this is the second occasion within a few weeks on which the Minister has hidden behind the skirts of the Public Accounts Committee, would you say whether it is in order for a Minister or any Member of the House to refer to a matter as being before the Public Accounts Committee before the Committee has reported to this House? Secondly, will you say whether or not it is in order for this House to deal immediately with a matter on the basis of a Report made by the Comptroller and Auditor General?

Mr. Speaker: It is probably all right to refer to a matter which is referred to by the Comptroller and Auditor General, because he reports to this House. Whether or no dealing with it by Question and Answer before the Committee has reported is thought to be the best method is another matter. Strictly, I suppose, we cannot indicate in this House any proceedings before the Committee before it has reported. I think there must be some commonsense principle about it in this sense, that if a Minister desires to say to the House, that being his view, that he would rather deal with the matter after the Committee has reported, it is material in that context to say that the matter is before the Committee.

Mr. Warbey: While accepting your Ruling, Mr. Speaker, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman what further evidence he requires than that provided in the Report fo the Comptroller and Auditor General, in view of the fact that the manufacturers refuse to supply the chemical except on a cost-plus basis, and insisted upon a minimum profit of 17 per cent., rising to 45 per cent., and, in addition—


[Interruption.]—it is just as well that these facts should be widely known—and insisted that the cost should include the amortisation of the capital expended on new plant over a period of five years? Does not the right hon. Gentleman think that this matter ought immediately to be referred to the Monopolies Commission in order to show that it is quite improper that a powerful private monopoly should hold up the public interest to ransom in this way?

Mr. Maudling: The answer to the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question is that I am waiting to hear the other side of the case.

Distribution of Industry

Mr. Pargiter: asked the President of the Board of Trade the arrangements between his Department and firms receiving assistance under the Distribution of Industry Acts; and whether it is his general policy that a contractual undertaking should be entered into.

Mr. Maudling: It has been and will continue to be the practice that assistance under the Distribution of Industry Acts and under the Local Employment Act is covered by contractual agreements. Agreements under which assistance was given by the Board of Trade or by the Treasury before the coming into force of the Local Employment Act are preserved by the provisions of Section 28 of that Act.

Tractor Factory, Basildon

Mr. Manuel: asked the President of the Board of Trade to what extent, before taking the decision to permit the building by Fords of a new £10 million tractor factory at Basildon, Essex, he consulted with the Minister of Transport on the probable effect of this development on road safety and traffic congestion in Essex and the adjacent parts of England.

Mr. Maudling: This development involves no additional employment: the increased output will be largely exported. There was therefore no need for such consultations.

Mr. Manuel: Does not the President of the Board of Trade think that today —when we have such an appalling number of accidents, resulting in many

cases in death, every day on the roads —in any future negotiations for the development of a site, he should consult with the Minister of Transport to see if it is likely to add to the congestion on the roads in that area? Obviously, whether the same number of staff is to be employed or not, congestion is likely to be concentrated round that £10 million factory in that area, and I hope the Minister will agree that this matter should be in the forefront in any negotiations of a similar character that take place in future.

Mr. Maudling: The hon. Member's supplementary question seems to me merely to repeat in other words what is in his original Question, to which I can only give the same answer.

Mr. Jay: rose—

Mr. Manuel: On a point of order. May I ask you, Mr. Speaker, if you would consider ruling that the Minister was quite wrong, as my choice of words was quite different, and the phrase "forefront of negotiations" does not appear in my Question at all, and I think it is impertinence—

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member may address points of order to me, but not that sort of thing, which is not a point of order.

Mr. Jay: I was about to ask the President of the Board of Trade—

Mr. Manuel: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. As you say that I must not address that point of order to you, may I put this to you? The Minister said that I said something which I did not say. Surely I am at liberty to raise the matter with you with a view to fair treatment being extended to both sides of the House?

Mr. Speaker: I do not want to take up time unduly. What did not strike me very much as a point of order was the request that I should rule that the Minister was impertinent. He may or he may not have been, but it did not seem to me to be a point of order.

Mr. Jay: To return to the substance of the Question, would the right hon. Gentleman agree that, if this development were to lead to a large increase in employment in the Dagenham and


Basildon area, it would be an unfortunate use of his powers under the Local Employment Act?

Mr. Maudling: I quite agree. Had that been likely to happen, I certainly would not have agreed to it.

Mr. Lawson: Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that the position is that if the firm is big enough it will get its way, despite anything that the President of the Board of Trade says?

Mr. Maudling: The position is precisely the opposite. I have made it clear on more than one occasion in this House that where a firm wants additional space in order to get greater production from its existing labour force, it would be absolute folly to refuse it and it would not be in the national interest. It is understood that the purpose of the Ford expansion in this area is to increase not the labour force but the productivity of the existing labour force. All development is taking place outside the south of England in terms of employment.

Royal Ordnance Factory, Liverpool

Mrs. Braddock: asked the President of the Board of Trade, in view of the anticipated closure of the Royal Ordnance Factory, Liverpool, by December, 1960, what steps he has taken to ensure the continued use of this well-equipped and easily adaptable factory for other purposes.

Mr. Maudling: Subject to other use by Government Departments and to preemptive rights, the factory will be recommended to suitable firms seeking new production space.

Mrs. Braddock: Will the right hon. Gentleman ensure that as much publicity as possible is given to the fact that this factory will close, and will he make certain that it is not left empty following its closure? There are 575 employees over 50 years of age who may not want to leave the area. Will the right hon. Gentleman, therefore, ensure that some use is made of this factory either by another Department or by private enterprise?

Mr. Maudling: Yes, Sir. That is exactly what we are trying to do.

Japan (Trade Negotiations)

Mr. Rankin: asked the President of the Board of Trade what progress he has made in his negotiations to expand trade with Japan.

Mr. Maudling: These negotiations are still in progress and I am not yet in a position to make a statement.

Mr. Rankin: Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that they have been taking a very long time, and may we assume that there is no danger of a further hold-up or suspension of these trading negotiations? Could the right hon. Gentleman say whether some of these difficulties are arising from the fact that Japan is seeking better quotas for those of her exports which are not on open general licence?

Mr. Maudling: This negotiation is designed to increase the facilities for trade on both sides, which means expanding quotas on both sides, among other things. Being that sort of negotiation, it naturally leads to a good deal of fairly tough bargaining, but we have been making progress.

Sulphate of Ammonia

Mr. Holt: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he has reached a decision on the application for the removal of the duty on sulphate of ammonia.

Mr. Maudling: I cannot yet say when I shall be in a position to announce a decision on this application.

Mr. Holt: Can the right hon. Gentleman indicate the reason for the delay?

Mr. Maudling: The reason for it is the importance of hearing in full the opinions of all interested parties.

Mr. Holt: Would the right hon. Gentleman say what interested party other than the Government has raised any objection to the removal of this duty?

Mr. Maudling: I cannot give details of objections raised in discussions that are taking place in confidence. These tariff applications take a long time, and it is most important that anyone concerned, either as a home producer or as an importer with conflicting interests,


should be satisfied before the Government take the decision that he has had a full opportunity of being heard and his argument considered.

Apprenticeships, Bishop Auckland

Mr. Boyden: asked the President of the Board of Trade, in view of the low number of apprenticeships now available to Bishop Auckland school leavers, what steps he is taking to attract to the district firms whose work will offer an increase in the number of apprenticeships available.

Mr. Maudling: Bishop Auckland has been listed as a development district.

Mr. Boyden: That is not a satisfactory Answer. Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that only 23 per cent. of the boy school leavers at Easter were able to get apprenticeships? This is 11 per cent. below the national average, which is sinking. Many of the boys who get jobs do not get satisfactory jobs, and many of them are out of work. Cannot the right hon. Gentleman use the new Act to do something about this?

Mr. Maudling: We are using the new Act to the best of our ability in this district and in other districts. We can do no more at the moment than put Bishop Auckland on the list of development districts. It will be treated like all the other areas where the danger of unemployment is great or where there is an existing high level of unemployment.

Perishable Foodstuffs

Mrs. Butler: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will invite the Committee on Consumer Protection to consider the methods by which the housewife can best be protected from the offer for sale of perishable foodstuffs whose quality and taste falls below the standards which consumers, today, are entitled to expect; what complaints he has received on this subject; and if he will refer such complaints to the Committee for its consideration.

Mr. Maudling: Any such complaints as the hon. Member for Wood Green (Mrs. Butler) describes are referred to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. The Committee on Consumer Protection was given extremely wide terms of reference, and I

do not think it right to influence its selection of the topics which merit its consideration.

Mrs. Butler: Does not the right hon. Gentleman realise that consumers are complaining about many of these foods, particularly flavourless vegetables, stale milk and eggs which are not fresh? In view of the importance of balancing the great amount of processed foods in our diet with natural foods which are fresh and of good quality, is not this a consumer interest to which the Molony Committee's attention should be particularly directed?

Mr. Maudling: I agree that this is a very important point. Individual complaints should go to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. The terms of reference of the Molony Committee certainly cover this matter, and, within its terms of reference, this Committee is willing and anxious to receive views from anyone on any subject. I cannot tell it to look at any specific matter, but I am certain that any responsible representations which it receives on this or an any other subject will be carefully considered.

Ammonium Sulphate

Mr. Willey: asked the President of the Board of Trade by what amounts the German and Belgian manufacturers of ammonium sulphate have agreed to raise their exports prices consequent upon the consideration of the application for an anti-dumping duty.

Mr. Maudling: Exporters in both countries have undertaken to increase their export prices to the United Kingdom by £2 10s. per ton.

Mr. Willey: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that this is not altogether satisfactory? We are here concerned with fertilisers which are subsidised. We have had the Monopolies Commission's Report. We are also desirous of getting farming costs down. Will the right hon. Gentleman keep a very careful eye on any development following these agreements?

Mr. Maudling: Yes, Sir. I studied this particular case with great care. There is a clearly established margin of dumping here and the additional increase in


price which has been accepted is based upon the dumping margin which has been established.

Biscuit Manufacturing Industry

Mr. Darling: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will refer the organisation of the biscuit manufacturing industry to the Monopolies Commission for study and report.

Mr. Maudling: When I am considering new references to the Monopolies Commission I will bear the hon. Member's suggestion in mind.

Mr. Darling: I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman has read the debate on agriculture yesterday, but will he bear in mind the observations made on both sides of the House that the disparity between the prices of wheat and wheat products is something that should be considered?

Mr. Maudling: I will certainly study the matter.

Monopolies Commission

Mr. Lipton: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he has now decided about new references to the Monopolies Commission.

Mr. Maudling: I am not yet in a postion to make an announcement about new references to the Monopolies Commission.

Mr. Lipton: Will the President of the Board of Trade put the dangerous newsprint monopoly at the top of his list for investigation? Is it not against the public interest that this vital commodity should be in the iron grip of such a small number of people? Will the right hon. Gentleman get a move on?

Mr. Maudling: If there is a number of people involved, even though a small number, it would be less a matter for the Monopolies Commission than for the Restrictive Practices Court.

Mr. Jay: In view of the right hon. Gentleman's rather vague answers, can he assure us that he is not in practice winding up the work of the Monopolies Commission?

Mr. Maudling: Most certainly.

Washing Machines and Refrigerators

Mr. Ginsburg: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will state for the years 1954 and 1959, in respect of washing machines and domestic refrigerators, both the value of the goods imported and the ratio of the imports against the exports.

Mr. Maudling: As the Answer contains a number of figures, I am circulating the available information in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Mr. Ginsburg: While looking forward to those figures with very great interest, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether they are not very disturbing from the balance of payments point of view? Will not they show that there has been a consistent fall in our exports of these two manufactured products and a systematic increase in the importation of them? Does not this suggest that our export drive is lagging in this regard? Also, do not the figures show a danger of prematurely liberalising our imports without ensuring that there is a sustained export drive?

Mr. Maudling: I do not think that that is very relevant to the question of liberalising imports, but I must agree that our export achievement in this sector recently has been disappointing. I know that the industry is well aware of our feelings in the matter, and it is now making vigorous efforts to try to improve its export record.

Mr. Ginsburg: Further to that reply, may I draw the right hon. Gentleman's attention to an article in the Westminster Bank Review? Would it not be correct to say that there has been a very marked increase also in the imports of these products? Is the Minister aware that that increase is going on at present and is it not rather disturbing?

Mr. Maudling: It is perfectly true that there has been a big increase recently in the import of manufactured goods generally but the last issue of the National Institute Economic Review showed that a balanced liberalisation generally of trade and manufactured goods has helped this country. The inference from that, of course, is that we should be competitive.

Following is the information:


Item

1954
1959



United Kingdom imports
United Kingdom exports
Imports as a percentage of exports
United Kingdom imports
United Kingdom exports
Imports as a percentage of exports




£'000
£'000
per cent.
£'000
£'000
per cent.


Domestic refrigerators, complete (including complete mechanical units)
…
184
7,806
2
3,169
4,025
78


Parts
…
n/a
n/a
—
254
3,799
—


Domestic electric washing machines, complete (including dryers and combined washers and dryers)
…
n/a
4,562
—
3,998
4,441
90


Parts
…
n/a
598
—
n/a
973
—


Note.—The figures may not be completely comparable as between imports and exports or as tween 1954 and 1959.

European Economic Community

Mr. Grimond: asked the President of the Board of Trade what reply he has sent to the new proposals now put forward by the European Economic Community regarding economic developments in Europe.

Mr. Maudling: Ministers of the E.F.T.A. this week in Lisibon will be considering their attitude towards these proposals, which we expect to receive shortly. So far as the United Kingdom is concerned, I can assure the House that there will be a positive and forthcoming response to any constructive attempt to resolve the present difficulties.

Mr. Grimond: Could the right hon. Gentleman be more specific about "a positive and forthcoming response"? We have heard a great deal about that but have never got down to concrete terms.

Mr. Maudling: Yes, Sir, certainly. The point is that the Seven still regard the Free Trade Area as the best solution for the problems of European economic relations but we know that the Six do not as a whole accept that point of view. We are anxious to know what are the difficulties that they see. Once we know that we can find ways of meeting them, but in present circumstances it is rather like firing into the blue to take initiatives when one does not know what the other people want.

Mr. Rankin: Is it not also the case that the economic and trade difficulties created in Europe have led to the suspension of trade negotiations with Poland and have hindered those with Japan?

Mr. Maudling: No, I do not think that there is any relation whatsoever between these various negotiations.

Export Goods (Packaging)

Dr. D. Johnson: asked the President of the Board of Trade, in view of the importance of the export industry, what guidance he gives to British exporters with regard to the importance of the proper packaging of goods for export, with a view to ensuring their delivery in undamaged condition on arrival at their destination.

Mr. Maudling: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing attention to this important matter and I agree with him generally. It is not for the Government to give expert advice in this matter, but exporters have available the excellent services provided by the Institute of Packaging and the Printing and Allied Trades Research Association.

Dr. Johnson: Is my right hon. Friend aware that I have been given an instance of a consignment of fragile goods needed for the construction of a factory in the Middle East arriving in no less than a 72 per cent. damaged condition? Will


he draw attention to the services upon which he has remarked at every possible opportunity in the future in view of the endless delay and the general loss of prestige which occur on these occasions?

Mr. Maudling: I would not generalise from a particular instance. I should be grateful for more information on that case.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL FINANCE

Shipping

Mr. Shinwell: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what financial or other plans he has for the relief of British shipping, as a result of his study of the industry's difficulties.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Derick Heathcoat Amory): The current difficulties of the British shipping industry are being studied by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport. So far as taxation is concerned, the shipping industry already receives more favourable treatment than any other British industry by virtue of the 40 per cent. investment allowance. I have no plans for further measures at present.

Mr. Shinwell: Would not the right hon. Gentleman agree, first of all, that he and his colleague the Minister of Transport have completely failed to come to an arrangement with either the United States Government or the United States maritime interests. Secondly, is he aware that the investment allowances are of no value to shipowners unless profits are made? Although shipowners, unlike farmers, are not asking for a temporary or permanent subsidy, will the right hon. Gentleman consider, where shipbuilding is urgently required, the possibility of providing loans at low rates of interest?

Mr. Amory: International arrangements are a matter for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport. I understand that the General Council of British Shipping is conducting a survey of the problems of the industry at present and no doubt will be reporting the results to my right hon. Friend. The investment allowance is not only available in cases where profits are earned currently but also where they are likely to be earned in the immediate years to come.

Mrs. McLaughlin: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, because of lack of assistance and encouragement, the British shipbuilding industry is in great difficulties about the future and that many people will be out of work in the industry in this country in the next few years unless something really drastic is done in this matter?

Mr. Amory: Again, I hope that my hon. Friend will address any Questions to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport. I understand that a survey of the problems of the shipbuilding industry is being made at present by the Shipbuilding Advisory Committee.

Mr. Shinwell: I am not wishing to quarrel with the right hon. Gentleman about his right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport, but is he aware that the Minister of Transport is a complete failure as far as any improvement in the shipping industry is concerned? While I am not asking for his resignation, it might at any rate be considered.

Mr. Amory: It does not fall to me to consider, but I might say that I have the highest regard and admiration for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport.

Mines and Factories (Chief Inspectors' Salaries)

Dr. Stross: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what were the salaries paid to the Chief Inspector of Mines and the Chief Inspector of Factories in 1938; and what are the salaries now current.

Mr. Amory: In 1938 a scale ranging from £1,450 to £1,650 in both cases; at the present time £4,400 and £3,500 respectively.

Dr. Stross: In view of the recent legislation and the extra burden and responsibilities placed upon the Chief Inspector of Factories, does not the right hon. Gentleman think that the last figure he gave should be revised upwards and that there should be a similar salary scale for these important people?

Mr. Amory: I understand that the only common feature between these two types of inspector is the title of Chief Inspector. As for the Chief Inspector of Factories, that is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour.

Sherry and Port

Mr. Pargiter: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what information he has with regard to the extent to which brewers have reduced the price of sherry and port by the glass over the counter to their customers following his Budget reduction in the heavy wine duties; and how the procedure of the trade in this respect compares with that following the reduction of the Beer Duties in the Budget of 1959.

Mr. Amory: Retail prices are, of course, matters for the trade, but I understand that where bar prices are controlled by the brewers they have, in general, passed the reductions in the wine duties on to the consumer, as they did the reduction in the Beer Duty last year.

Mr. Pargiter: What evidence has the Chancellor of this? Is he aware that the evidence I have is that there has been no reduction at all in the price of port and sherry by the glass over the counter and that the brewers have decided not to pass on the relief given in his Budget?

Mr. Amory: I have given it in relation to the brewer, but prices in many bars are fixed not by the brewers but by the licensees, who are independent in many cases. The hon. Member will have noted that in my main Answer I said:
… I understand … they have, in general …

Mr. Pargiter: Having regard to what has happened generally with the price of beer, to which there is also a reference in the Question, and the fact that there is no question of licensees fixing the price of beer because that is fixed by the brewers, may I ask why there is a difficulty about the brewers determining what the price ought to be in this case?

European Economic Community and European Free Trade Association

Mr. Bellenger: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) the principal factors preventing an agreement between the European Economic Community and the European Free Trade Association;
(2) what action he is now taking to initiate discussions between Her Majesty's Government and the Ministers

of the European Economic Community towards formulating proposals for an agreement between the six and the seven nations forming the European Economic Community and the European Free Trade Association.

Mr. Amory: I would refer the right hon. Gentleman to the Answer just given by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond).
It is not possible to assess the relative importance of the different factors until negotiations are held.
I would like to emphasise how much we welcome the proposal that discussions should take place.

Mr. Bellenger: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that neither the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) nor I was satisfied with his right hon. Friend's reply? Is he aware that all that his right hon. Friend told us was that a meeting is taking place in Lisbon shortly, but his right hon. Friend has been constantly engaged in meetings in the last year or two and the House is no wiser about the real causes of the differences between the Common Market powers and ourselves and now the Free Trade Area? Will Her Majesty's Government tell us what are these differences, so that if they cannot resolve them perhaps the House may be able to help the Government?

Mr. Amory: I think that the right hon. Gentleman will agree that it is impossible in terms of Answers to Questions to deal with the complex problems arising in this matter. I am sure that he will be aware also that members of the European Free Trade Association, both in November and in March last, emphasised the desirability of holding a meeting so that we might discover exactly what the reasons were that made it difficult for us to reach an understanding, and their relative importance. That is why we are very glad that it looks now as if there will be a chance of holding these discussions.

Mr. Bellenger: As the right hon. Gentleman cannot give a reply in answer to a Question, may I ask whether he would consider the possibility of issuing a White Paper or some other suitable


document in order to state specifically what he, at any rate, thinks are the causes of the difficulties?

Mr. Amory: Since it appears now that some discussions are likely, I think that we had better wait and see how those discussions go. We shall then be in a better position to report to the House on the current situation and the prospects.

Mr. Thorpe: Would the right hon. Gentleman agree that the recent Commonwealth communiqué has wiped out the excuse which we have had so often from the Government that the Commonwealth is opposed to this? Will he bear in mind that there is real disquiet that British industry will be excluded from one of the fastest growing markets in the world and that British agriculture will have a vast surplus which will be unable to reach the Common Market?

Mr. Amory: No, Sir. I think that there are real difficulties arising from our commitments in connection with Commonwealth trade which persist and will be likely to persist in this matter. They are not, I hope, insurmountable but they are quite formidable difficulties. As for the second part of the supplementary question, I know the anxiety, Which we share, that the United Kingdom should be excluded from the increasing trade in Europe. That is why we have taken the active part we have in working for an association between the two groups.

Mr. Mitchison: Would not the right hon. Gentleman, at some convenient time, indicate the borderline of responsibility between himself and the President of the Board of Trade about this matter and in answering questions about it?

Mr. Amory: It is sometimes difficult to draw borderlines because our joint responsibilities in this matter overlap in many ways—in the financial, economic and trade aspects of this problem.

Luncheon Vouchers

Mr. Fletcher: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that luncheon vouchers, issued by firms and subsequently claimed as tax relief

by them, are frequently used, not for the purpose of bona fide luncheons, but in exchange for groceries, cigarettes, and other commodities; and what steps he proposes to take to check the abuse of this system of taxation allowances.

Mr. Amory: I have read reports in the Press both of the misuse of luncheon vouchers and of the efforts of those who organise voucher schemes to stop the misuse. I am keeping the whole question of the taxability of luncheon vouchers under review.

Mr. Fletcher: Would not the right hon. Gentleman agree that this concession for luncheon vouchers is generally welcomed and regarded as beneficial? Indeed, the amount might well be increased. Is it not equally desirable that there should not be any abuse of the system?

Mr. Amory: Yes, I wholly agree with that. It was because I realised that this concession was appreciated and was, as I thought, a sensible one that I decided to continue the extra statutory concession, and, provided that abuse does not become substantial, I shall hope to continue doing that. That is why I am watching the situation.

Mr. Fernyhough: Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that there are many bigger expense rackets than this one? If he wants to deal with the bigger anomalies, will he turn his eyes in another direction?

Mr. Amory: I will take note of what the hon. Member has said, but he has not told me in which direction.

Hire Purchase

Mr. C. Osborne: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer in view of the fact that hire-purchase debts increased by £31 million in March as compared with £16 million in January and February, and is now 27 per cent. higher than a year ago at £920 million, if he is satisfied that his recent action to check the growth of hire purchase is proving; adequate; and what further action he, contemplates.

Mr. Amory: It is yet too early to judge the effects of the recent measures.

Mr. Osborne: If the next hire-purchase returns do not show a substantial fall,


will my right hon. Friend take really severe action to compel the nation to try to live within its income in this matter?

Mr. Amory: Perhaps we had better wait and see what the results are of the steps which have already been taken.

Carlton Gardens, S.W.I (Redevelopment)

Mr. K. Robinson: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether the Crown Estate Commissioners have communicated to him their plans for the redevelopment of Carlton Gardens, S.W.I; and the nature of the proposals.

Mr. Amory: The Crown Estate Commissioners have informed me that they are considering a scheme for redevelopment on the sites of Nos. 5, 6 and 7, Carlton Gardens by the erection of a new building to contain offices and flats.

Mr. Robinson: Why is it that a redevelopment in London always seems to involve the demolition of our most attractive buildings? These buildings are part of Nash's great scheme, much of which has already disappeared. Will the right hon. Gentleman use his influence with the Commissioners, who have already shown themselves sensitive to public opinion about the Regent's Park Terraces, to get them to think again?

Mr. Amory: I agree generally with what the hon. Gentleman has said, but these buildings are not on the list of those which would have been scheduled as being of historic or architectural interest had they not been Crown property. Other buildings in the vicinity are on the list, but not these particular ones.
The drawings of the redevelopment are being submitted to the Fine Art Commission and, after that, to the London County Council as planning authority. The Crown Estate trustees will not take any action until they receive reports from both those bodies.

Local Authorities (Capital Works)

Mr. Mannel: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what communications he has received from Ayr County Council arising from the recommendations of the Radcliffe Report regarding borrowing by local authorities for capital works; and what was the nature of his reply to the county council.

Mr. Amory: The Council has, on several occasions, made representations in favour of the implementation of these recommendations of the Radcliffe Committee. A full reply was sent on 10th March this year on the lines of what I said on this subject in the debate on 26th November last.

Mr. Manuel: Is the Chancellor aware that this major local authority is very dissatisfied with the nature of his replies, and is completely unanimous in its support of the recommendations of the Radcliffe Report about borrowing by local authorities for capital development? Is he further aware that it feels itself to be very restricted now in its programme for capital works because of the impact of high interest charge on its local rates? Will he, in some measurable time ahead, reconsider this so that local authorities may get some encouragement to go ahead with schemes that have been hanging fire for a long time?

Mr. Amory: I am aware of the views of the local authority concerned which, I believe, the hon. Member has represented. As he knows, on several occasions I have given reasons to the House for the views I hold in this matter. Broadly, I cannot think it right that, with capital in short supply, local authorities should be insulated from the effects of current interest rates.

Parcels, London Airport (Customs Clearance)

Mr. Holt: asked the Chancellor of of the Exchequer the usual length of time required to clear parcels, which have been sent by air from Europe, through the Customs at London Airport.

Mr. Amory: Properly documented parcels are normally cleared by the Customs within 24 hours. If the hon. Member has any particular case in mind, I shall be glad to investigate it if he will let me have details.

Mr. Holt: Is the Chancellor aware that that Answer is rather surprising, as I hear many complaints about delay? I know of a case, of which I will send him details, in which a parcel urgently required for a textile machine, part of which came from Germany, appears to have lain in the Customs, despite repeated requests for it, for some eleven days.

Mr. Amory: I should be glad to receive details of such a case. I remind the hon. Member, however, that it is unsafe to assume that the responsibility for such delays is necessarily always that of the Customs. It may arise from other causes, but I will certainly look into the case he mentioned.

Mr. Snow: When the Chancellor says "properly documented", would he cause inquiries to be made as to whether these documents are as simple as they might be? Some are extremely complicated and, in many instances, not really applicable to relatively small importations.

Mr. Amory: I will look into that. We want these documents to be as simple as possible. When I was in business I looked at shipping documents and they seemed to me to be tremendously complicated, but I was assured that it was essential that this should be so. Naturally, we want these things to be as simple as possible.

Estate Duty

Mr. Gough: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he is aware that moneys deposited in this country by foreign nationals resident abroad are subject to Estate Duty in the event of the death of the depositor, even though such death occurs outside the limits of the United Kingdom; and what consideration he has given to an amendment of the law in this matter.

Mr. Amory: In general, subject to exceptions in favour of certain Government securities and in some cases to the provisions of double tax agreements, Estate Duty is payable on property situated in this country, including money deposited here, regardless of the domicile or place of death of the owner. I have no proposals at present for amendment of the law on this point.

Mr. Gough: Does my right hon. Friend agree that this situation creates an unnecessary handicap on our balance of payments situation? Further, does he agree that considerable sums of money—particularly from people from the Middle East—are now leaving the sterling area because of this situation and are being deposited either in Swiss francs in Zurich or in dollars in New York? Will he see whether it is possible to change the situation?

Mr. Amory: I agree with my hon. Friend that those aspects of the problem are very important indeed. I will certainly look into the problem generally with those points in mind. In the meantime, if he has evidence which he could give me which would help in my considerations, I shall be very glad to have it.

Mr. Gough: Would my right hon. Friend be surprised if I told him that a certain individual from the Middle East deposited as much as £3 million in this country? [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] Because of the strength of this country. He then died in the Middle East and this deposit suffered the full Estate Duty. The result of this sort of thing will be that no further money will come from that country.

Mr. Amory: I should be glad to have details of any cases where my hon. Friend thinks our present action may not be in accordance with the long-term benefit of this country.

Foreign Investment (United Kingdom)

Mr. Janner: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in view of the policy of Her Majesty's Government to encourage foreign investment in the United Kingdom, he will now take steps to obtain more accurate information as to the total amount of foreign investment in this country at the present time.

Mr. Amory: The results of the Board of Trade's first inquiry into direct investment by British companies abroad and by foreign companies in the United Kingdom, will shortly become available. This will give accurate information on foreign investment flows. Information about the total stock of foreign investment in this country could be obtained only by an elaborate census which would not be. justified at present.

Mr. Janner: In view of the importance' of this matter and the necessity for ensuring that foreign investment is encouraged, while at the same ensuring that it does not reach an amount which would interfere with the economy of the country, can the right hon. Gentleman say whether there is any other method by which he can get a more accurate assessment of the amount of investment in the country?

Mr. Amory: I think that the hon. Gentleman will agree that the important thing—and this is an important matter which he has raised—is that we should know what the flow is either way and I think this information will enable us to assess the flow. That is the important thing. The Radcliffe Committee considered whether a census of investment would be worth while, but, in view of the amount of work involved, it said that it hesitated to make any positive recommendation.

SHIPBUILDING INDUSTRY

Mr. Grey: asked the Prime Minister whether the speech of the Minister for Science to the Royal Institution of Naval Architects on 22nd March regarding the rationalisation of the shipbuilding industry represents the policy of Her Majesty's Government.

Mr. Short: asked the Prime Minister whether the speech of the Minister for Science on 22nd March regarding rationalisation of the shipbuilding industry represents the policy of Her Majesty's Government.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. R. A. Butler): I have been asked to reply.
My noble Friend made no statement of policy in his speech, but drew attention to a number of questions of concern to the shipbuilding and ship repairing industries.

Mr. Grey: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that if the Minister for Science did not make any statement of policy he was certainly thought to do so, and, that many people in the North-Bast, and indeed in the whole of the country, thought he was flying a kite, and viewed with concern the statement made to the Royal Institution of Naval Architects? As a matter of fact, many people thought that it was a kind of tolling of the bell for small shipping. In view of the fact that we are deeply concerned about the position of the shipyards as a whole, can we have an assurance that before any reorganisation takes place there will be full agreement between the trade unions and the employers concerned?

Mr. Butler: I think that the hon. Gentleman has put a wrong interpreta-

tion on the position, and so would his hon. Friends put it if they followed the line of the argument he adopted in his supplementary question. Her Majesty's Government are well aware of the difficulties of the industry, but, as we announced on 30th March, we have set up a sub-committee of the Shipbuilding Advisory Committee and the sub-committee has now started its work. I will certainly convey to my right hon. Friends principally concerned the request made by the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Short: Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the Prime Minister that I, for one, and I imagine many of my hon. Friends, will take an extremely serious view of any proposals for rationalisation of the shipbuilding industry on the lines of Shipbuilding Securities Limited in the inter-war years? Will he bear in mind that the structure of this industry is quite different from that of the aircraft industry and that, if anything, the smaller yards are doing better than the big ones? Finally, with regard to his last reply, will he say whether the Shipbuilding Advisory Committee's sub-committee is to consider any proposal for rationalisation of the shipbuilding industry?

Mr. Butler: I do not think that the wider fears to which the hon. Gentleman gave expression are likely to be realised. I will investigate the question put by the hon. Gentleman in relation to the terms of reference of the sub-committee so that I can give him an accurate answer, and I shall be glad to do that if he puts down a Question. In relation to his other fears, I hope that what we are doing will indicate that we are aware of the problems of small shipbuilders.

Mr. Gaitskell: Is not the right hon. Gentleman making rather light of this matter? The Minister for Science is reported to have said that shipbuilding production in the United Kingdom may fall heavily in the next five years. He is also reported to have said that perhaps the future lies with fewer and larger units. What is the position of the Government in this matter? Are they in agreement with the Minister for Science that in fact production is likely to fall heavily in the next few years? If so, what is the Government's policy on this matter? What steps are they taking to deal with the situation?

Mr. Butler: My noble Friend's speech consisted largely of a number of rather fundamental questions about the future of the shipbuilding industry, a number of which I have before me here, which seem to me to cover the subject and do a public service by attempting, with the aid of the public and with the aid of the House, to elicit answers to fundamental questions affecting one of the more important and major industries. I do not share the anxiety of the right hon. Gentleman. We have appointed a subcommittee of the Shipbuilding Advisory Committee to give us information, and I feel sure that at the right time the House will be informed.

Mr. Gaitskell: I am not concerned whether the right hon. Gentleman shares my anxiety but whether he shares the anxiety of the Minister for Science. I am not criticising the noble Lord. I think that it is an excellent thing that these frank questions should be asked and frank statements made, but this puts an obligation on the Government to say what their position is in the matter.

Mr. Butler: It is because we are not frightened of this fundamental problem and are aware of the problems of the shipbuilding industry that we welcome my noble Friend's intervention.

Dame Irene Ward: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that, although the point of view he has expressed today is understood, there are those who are engaged in shipbuilding, ship repairing and shipping, both on the employers' side and on the trade unions' side, who have been anxiously awaiting his reply? Will he bear in mind that, though he may be quite satisfied with the speech of the Minister for Science, it has caused deep concern? Will he please convey that impression to the Minister for Science so that in future he will make it perfectly plain that he is not enunciating Government policy in this matter?

Mr. Butler: I am not in the least complacent about the shipbuilding industry. Indeed, I recently paid a visit to the North-East to try to examine what was happening. I am satisfied that it is much better to examine the fundamental problems raised by my noble Friend than to ignore them, as was done by the party opposite.

COMMONWEALTH PRIME MINISTERS' MEETING

Mr. Marquand: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on the conclusion of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference.

Mr. Grimond: asked the Prime Minister what agreement was reached with the Commonwealth Prime Ministers at their recent conference on a Commonwealth policy towards the Common Market.

Mr. Shinwell: asked the Prime Minister whether he intends to make a statement in the House on the deliberations and decisions of the Prime Ministers' Commonwealth Conference.

Mr. R. A. Butler: I have been asked to reply.
I would refer to the communiqués issued during and at the end of the meeting.

Mr. Marquand: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that these conclusions of the Prime Ministers' Conference are of historic importance because they evidently took full account of the resolution passed by this House on 8th April concerning the policy in South Africa? Is he further aware that the final sentence in the statement gave very general satisfaction? The statement said:
The Ministers emphasised that the Commonwealth itself is a multi-racial association and expressed the need to ensure good relations between all member States and peoples of the Commonwealth.
Would it not be a complete disregard of that resolution of the Prime Ministers if Her Majesty's Government were now to accede to any request by the Union of South Africa to return refugees who sought refuge in Bechuanaland and the other Protectorates?

Mr. Butler: I think that the last point, although obviously one of vital importance, should not be answered on this occasion, but should be answered on a specific occasion, because its implications are being studied at the moment by my right hon. Friend and myself. In relation to the right hon. Gentleman's reference to the communiqué, I am glad to have his support, and I do not doubt that of many other right hon. and hon. Members, for the general line adopted by the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference. It


is at least satisfactory to feel that we have the endorsement of the House in this matter.

Mr. Grimond: As the reference to the Common Market was some vague general observation, and as we were told earlier this afternoon by the President of the Board of Trade that he still does not know the objections of the Six to the Free Trade Area, can the Home Secretary give us any indication that there is a Commonwealth policy towards the very important subject of the Common Market in Europe?

Mr. Butler: There is a specific reference to this in the communiqué, backing any policy following the principles of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. A reminder of what European countries can do for overseas countries is set out in the communiqué, and I do not think that I can usefully add to it, since it has been agreed by the Prime Ministers of the Commonwealth countries.

Mr. Shinwell: Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will confirm or deny the reports that there was a considerable discussion of the promotion of economic development throughout the Commonwealth? As this is of vital importance for the United Kingdom and all the Commonwealth countries, is it not desirable, in addition to the communiqué— which everybody knows is a very thin affair—that the House and country should be informed of what transpired at the Conference, and what is likely to be the policy of the Commonwealth?

Mr. Butler: The right hon. Gentleman is correct in saying that the Commonwealth Prime Ministers attached importance to the question of overseas development, which is vital to the future of the Commonwealth, and its peoples, but I cannot enlarge upon a communiqué agreed by representatives in the form of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers and the President of Pakistan. I cannot add anything more on my own responsibility.

Mr. Marquand: In view of what the right hon. Gentleman has said about the last part of my Question, will he consult his hon. Friend the Minister of State for Commonwealth Relations about the desirability of making a statement on this subject on Thursday?

Mr. Butler: Yes. I undertake to consult my noble Friend and my hon. Friend the Minister of State.

Mr. Gaitskell: Can the right hon. Gentleman give an undertaking that, pending that statement, no action will be taken to send back those who have escaped to other territories?

Mr. Butler: While not wishing to give a final answer on that matter, I would not have thought that there was a great possibility of such an occurrence within the time suggested by the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough. East (Mr. Marquand).

Mr. Gaitskell: I should like to ask a question arising out of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' statement. My right hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) drew attention to the importance of Commonwealth economic development. There is a specific reference to some kind of new initiative. Can the right hon. Gentleman say what intention Her Majesty's Government have of pursuing this matter further? Is it the case that a new so-called Colombo Plan will be developed for Africa? Can we be given some idea how things will proceed in this direction?

Mr. Butler: I would not like to call it exactly a Colombo Plan, but the Ministers concerned have asked that this matter shall be further studied immediately after their departure, and that it shall be kept alive.

Sir G. Nicholson: As it is obvious that this was an historic communiqué, in which many subjects of vital importance to the future of the Commonwealth were raised but were not settled by the Conference, can my right hon. Friend enlarge a little upon what sort of follow-up there will be to the Conference, in order to deal with the many tremendous problems created and the tremendous opportunities opened up?

Mr. Butler: There is the normal machinery of studying these questions through the High Commissioners, both here and overseas, and there is also the financial and economic machinery first thought of in the early 1950s and since brought to perfection under the Chancellorship of my right hon. Friend, which follows up the financial and economic


aspects of the problems of the Commonwealth. These matters will be followed up in both these ways. If my hon. Friend will turn to the communiqué, he will see that machinery has been set up to follow up the constitutional implications created by certain nations which have achieved or may be considering Republican status. In these three ways—economically, financially, and constitutionally —as well as generally, these matters will be followed up.

Mr. Shinwell: Does not the right hon. Gentleman realise by what he has said and from the questions asked about the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference, that hon. and right hon. Members on both sides of the House want to know a little more about what transpired? We want to know more about what will happen in future. Will the right hon. Gentleman consider at any rate issuing a White Paper dealing with the possibility of economic development in the Commonwealth?

Mr. Butler: That presents rather a different constitutional problem, because this was a communiqué agreed by all the Commonwealth Prime Ministers. It will be difficult to issue a unilateral statement, but if any further explanation can be given, by United Kingdom Ministers it will be given, in order to illustrate the value of this Conference and its far-reaching effects.

HEADS OF GOVERNMENT (PARIS MEETING)

Mr. Grimond: (by Private Notice)asked the Prime Minister if he has any information to give the House on the Four-Power Meeting in Paris, and if he will make a statement.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. R. A. Butler): I have been asked to reply.
The four Heads of Government met in Paris yesterday morning. Mr. Khrushchev began by making a long statement about the case of the U2 aircraft, to which the President of the United States and my right hon. Friend replied. All these statements have since been made public. The conference then adjourned without having begun its work.
Subsequently, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister held private conversations with the French, American and Soviet leaders in order to explore the possibilities of getting the conference started. The three Western leaders met again this morning.
My right hon. Friend and his colleagues are still continuing their efforts to carry on with the work of the conference. In pursuance of this, President de Gaulle invited the other Heads of Government to a meeting at 3 p.m. this afternoon.
President Eisenhower and my right hon. Friend both accepted. No official reply has been received from Mr. Khrushchev, but I am informed that at the moment I am now speaking he has not attended the meeting. The situation is, therefore, uncertain.

Mr. Grimond: Is the Home Secretary aware that there will be widespread support for the Western effort to have a useful conference in Paris, but that if— as we all hope will not be the case—it should prove impossible, owing to the change in the Russian attitude, will Her Majesty's Government continue their efforts to reach agreement on the permanent cessation of tests of nuclear weapons?

Mr. Butler: Yes, Sir. I think that I can reply in the affirmative and say that it will certainly be our wish to make progress in disarmament I hope that


the House will understand that it is difficult for me to make any further comment on the position at the moment.

Mr. Gaitskell: As the right hon. Gentleman says, it is clear that he cannot tell us anything new at this stage. But is he aware that the whole House would regard it as deplorable if the U2 incident were allowed to stop the Summit Conference and a discussion of the vital issues which we wish to have discussed there?

Mr. Butler: Yes, Sir. Hon. Members will have seen Mr. Khrushchev's statement and President Eisenhower's reply. In the light of President Eisenhower's assurance about flights over Soviet territory, in the view of Her Majesty's Government there is no threat in being to prevent the Conference getting down to business. We very much hope that Mr. Khrushchev will see things in this light.

SCOTTISH ESTIMATES

Committee of Supply discharged from considering the Estimates set out here-under and the said Estimates referred to the Scottish Grand Committee:

Class 1, Vote 22 (Scottish Home Department) (Revised Estimate).

Class V, Vote 9 (Department of Health for Scotland) (Revised Estimate).

Class V, Vote 10 (National Health Service, Scotland).

Class V, Vote 12 (Exchequer Grants to Local Revenues, Scotland).

Class VIII, Vote 11 (Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland) (Revised Estimate).

Class IX, Vote 9 (Roads, &c, Scotland) (Revised Estimate).

—[Mr. R. A. Butler.]

Orders of the Day — GHANA (CONSEQUENTIAL PROVISION) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

3.38 p.m.

The Minister of State for Commonwealth Relations (Mr. C. J. M. Alport): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The purpose of the Bill is set out clearly in the Long Title, which says that it is to
Make provision as to the operation of the law in relation to Ghana and persons and things in any way belonging to or connected with Ghana, in view of Ghana's becoming a Republic while remaining a member of the Commonwealth.
The Bill is, therefore, an enabling Measure consequent upon the introduction of the new Constitution in Ghana, under the terms of which she will become a Republic. By an Act of the Ghana Parliament, a constituent Assembly was set up in February this year with full power to enact statutory provisions preparatory to and for finally establishing a Republic in Ghana. Exercising these powers, the Assembly ordered a plebiscite on the issue of whether the republican Constitution described in a White Paper published in March was to be accepted.
This plebiscite was completed at the end of last month when there was a substantial majority in favour of the republican Constitution. The Prime Minister of Ghana informed the Prime Ministers of the other member countries of the Commonwealth of the proposed change at their meeting in London last week. He also told them of Ghana's decision to maintain her association with the Commonwealth. The Prime Ministers unanimously agreed that Ghana should remain within the Commonwealth after the establishment of the Republic which is to take place on 1st July.
Let me emphasise that a decision regarding whether a Commonwealth country should become a republic or remain a monarchy is something which it must take for itself. Whether it may subsequently remain a member of the Commonwealth is a matter for the Commonwealth Prime Ministers in consultation. The question of republic or


monarchy is one on which the Government of the United Kingdom can take no view, nor do they aspire to do so.
The decision having been made, it becomes necessary for us to enact legislation on the lines of the Bill, because, without it, doubts may arise about whether, among other things, citizens of Ghana would continue to qualify under United Kingdom law as British subjects or Commonwealth citizens. Again, Ghana would cease to be within the statutory references to Her Majesty's Dominions or British possessions. This would have widespread effect. For instance, doubt would be thrown upon the legality of tariff preferences accorded to Ghana under the Ottawa Agreement Act, 1932.
I should like briefly to go through the main provisions of this short Bill. Clause 1 (1) effects the main purpose of the Bill It provides that when Ghana becomes a republic all existing law shall continue to apply to Ghana and to persons belonging to or connected with Ghana and to their goods and property as at present, which means that they will continue to have the same rights and privileges in this country as they have today and their goods will enjoy the same preferential treatment under our law. In fact, this subsection maintains the status quo regarding citizens of Ghana after that country becomes a republic and with regard to their interests in their property and goods.
Subsection (2) extends the provisions of the Bill beyond the law of the United Kingdom to the Colonies, Protectorates and Trust Territories. In the case of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, it is provided that the Bill does not extend to law which can be amended by the Legislatures either of the Federation or of Southern Rhodesia. The provisions of the Bill in this respect may seem at first sight a trifle complicated, but their effect is relatively simple and there are precedents in the Pakistan Consequential Provisions Act and, indeed, in the Malaya Independence Act, and in such cases the inclusion of this subsection is now common form.
Subsection (3) gives power to make Orders in Council, subject to the negative Resolution procedure, so as to modify existing United Kingdom Acts in so far as this may be necessary as a result of

the change of constitution in Ghana. Such amendments would be of a consequential nature. We cannot foresee that in any case they would be of great consequence or importance. For instance, there are certain Acts in which reference is made to warrants or other legal documents issued or signed by a governor or governor-general of an overseas territory, and it may be necessary in those Acts that we should replace at some time in the future the words "Governor" or "Governor-General" by "President" ox other appropriate authority in relation to Ghana.
At this point I should explain that the Ghana Government have asked that arrangements be made for the United Kingdom Colonial Stock Acts to continue to apply to Ghana stocks. It is intended that action should be taken under subsection (3) to continue the application of the Colonial Stock Acts to Ghana stocks, and to cover the modifications made necessary by the change in the constitutional status of Ghana. In fact, as I have already said, this will be undertaken by an appropriate Order in Council.
The Government of Ghana have also given us an assurance that they will accept the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom courts in the case of litigation relating to Ghana funds under the Colonial Stock Acts. Therefore, the position of stockholders will be doubly safeguarded, by the terms of the Order in Council to be issued and also by the assurance given to us by the Government of Ghana.
In Clause 2, reference is made to appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The Government of Ghana have informed us that after Ghana becomes a Republic they do not wish appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to continue. On the other hand, there are at present a certain number of appeals outstanding and were these to lapse when Ghana becomes a Republic on 1st July, Ghana litigants who have spent money on pursuing their cases right up to, or very nearly to, the Judicial Committee might consequently suffer injustice and hardship.
Clause 2 meets the request of the Ghana Government that appropriate arrangements may be made for these outstanding appeals to be heard. Under these arrangements, in accordance with the wish of the Ghana Government, it is


proposed that pending appeals not heard and disposed of by 30th June, 1961, should abate, but that those heard prior to that date and completed will be heard under arrangements to be made consequent to the publication of the Order in Council. These arrangements cannot be formalised until the Bill has reached the Statute Book and it may be of interest to the House to know that the number of appeals which we estimate to be outstanding will be between 10 and 20 on 1st July.
Right hon. and hon. Members will be aware that there are two precedents for Bills of this kind—without this reference to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council—the Consequential Provisions Bill, which became an Act in 1949, when India became a Republic, and the Measure of 1956, when Pakistan adopted the same status. With regard to the United Kingdom Parliament—and this applies to the previous Measures— the Bill recognises, for the purpose of United Kingdom law and the dependent territories of the United Kingdom, a further stage in the constitutional evolution of Ghana.
I think it right, and the wish of the House, that we should tell the people of Ghana that we recognise the decision is one which they have reached freely and in accordance with the independent status they occupy in the Commonwealth and that we should offer them on this occasion our best wishes for the future of their country. We believe that their decision, whatever it may be, will benefit the people of Ghana and assist the progress of peoples in Africa and in the Commonwealth generally.
I am sure that there could have been no more appropriate touch to this event and stage in the development of Ghana than that yesterday it should be announced that Her Majesty the Queen and Prince Philip intend to visit that country in 1961. It shows that whatever may be the changes which take place, the friendly spirit and co-operation existing between our countries will continue in the future.

3.50 p.m.

Mr. H. A. Marquand: We support the Bill. In doing so, we note with special interest and satisfaction that not only, as the Minister

of State has reminded us, has this decision of the Ghana people been approved after a plebiscite and a vote in the Assembly, but it carries with it, also, the approval of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference, which said, very definitely:
The heads of delegations of the other member countries of the Commonwealth assured the Prime Minister of Ghana that the present relations between their countries and Ghana would remain unaffected by this constitutional change and they declared that their Governments would accept and recognise Ghana's continued membership of the Commonwealth.
Previous experience of occasions when Bills of this kind have been introduced to the House confirm that that is undoubtedly true.
As we know, this Bill follows closely the provisions of a similar Measure introduced in 1956 in regard to Pakistan, and before that, India led the way, if I may use that expression, in deciding to become a Republic. Doubts may have been expressed once or twice about the wisdom or desirability of that course, but they roust surely have been wiped away by all that has followed since.
It is quite clear that these decisions by India and Pakistan have done nothing whatsoever to diminish the friendship between this country and the people of this country and the people of India and Pakistan. Our relations remain close. Our interests in their welfare, and our anxiety to help them in their social and economic development, remain as strong as they ever were. So it will be, I feel confident, with Ghana. So it will be when, in a few months' time, a similar Measure is introduced to make the necessary legal provisions for a similar decision by Ceylon, which has already been taken in principle.
As the Minister of State said, and as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said during the short debate upon the Pakistan Bill four years ago, this decision whether or not to adopt republican institutions is entirely one for the countries concerned. My right hon. Friend at that time said almost the same words as the Minister of State has used this afternoon. He said:
It is not a matter in which we should intervene or, if I may say so, express any opinion."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th March. 1956; Vol. 550, c. 234.]


If anyone had any suspicions that possibly this decision to become a Republic might engender any ill-feeling between ourselves and Ghana, that must have been entirely dissipated by the announcement to which the Minister has just referred, the very gratifying announcement, that Her Majesty the Queen and His Royal Highness the Prince Philip intend very soon to make the visit to Ghana which had to be postponed for the happiest of all possible reasons last year.
Ghana's full membership of the Commonwealth is already a symbol of the truth contained in the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' statement, to which reference was made earlier this afternoon at Question Time. It emphasises that the Commonwealth itself as a multiracial association expresses the need to ensure good relations between all member States and peoples of the Commonwealth. Ghana is the first fully African State to become a full self-governing member of the Commonwealth and since becoming fully self-governing she has played a noteworthy and valuable part in the work of the Commonwealth. I think that it is no secret that it was Dr. Nkrumah whose initiative led to the decision about the desirability of Commonwealth co-operation in the development of Africa, to which reference was also made earlier this afternoon, particularly by my right hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell).
It is no secret that both in the Commonwealth, the Conference itself, and in the various contacts which are, happily, always made outside on these occasions, Dr. Nkrumah has shown an earnest desire to encourage the development of not only his own country, but other countries throughout the African Continent. Shortly, he will become Head of his State. No one can doubt his qualifications to be so. He will have the opportunity and the right to judge the welfare of his fellow-citizens, somewhat aloof from party strife. It will be in keeping with the spirit of the Commonwealth if he exercises that responsibility and that right in a manner not only free from any racial bias, but with a full recognition of the principles of the human freedoms and of the prevalence of democracy which are now, as a result of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' statement, the declared objectives of our Commonwealth.
Reference was made by the Minister of State to Ghana's decision not to resort, after cases are disposed of, to the Privy Council. I understand that there are certain technical difficulties about doing this when a country becomes a Republic. I am not a lawyer, but I think that I am not wrong in saying that the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council does not hand down judgments; it merely makes recommendations to Her Majesty.
When one of the Commonwealth countries becomes a Republic this is no longer possible, because Her Majesty is no longer the Head of that State. There are, then, technical difficulties in continuing to resort to the Privy Council on such occasions as would normally be appropriate for Canada or Australia. I understand that the Prime Minister of Malaya has found a way round this difficulty, but I am not necessarily suggesting that others should do the same.
I hope that when this matter of resort to the Privy Council is being thought about in Ghana, in Ceylon and elsewhere further consideration will be given to a proposal which was brought before the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference recently, and which was certainly not turned down—the proposal brought forward by Senator Cooray, of Ceylon, who is Minister of Justice and a very distinguished lawyer, that a new formulation of a court for the Commonwealth might be studied.
No more than that was said in the Motion that I put on the Order Paper with the support of my right hon. and hon. Friends and hon. Members opposite.

[That this House, recalling the solemn obligation undertaken by the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries to co-operate with the United Nations by joint and separate action in promoting respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, without distinction of race; welcoming the accession by Her Majesty's Government to the European Convention of Human Rights and its application to Crown Colonies and Pro-tectorates; and recognising that the Commonwealth cannot endure unless all its members recognise and guarantee human rights and fundamental freedoms irrespective of race, colour, or creed, calls upon Her Majesty's Government to initiate the study by all member-countries of the Commonwealth of the practicability of formulating a Commonwealth Convention of


Human Rights and the establishment of the necessary investigatory and judicial organs necessary for that high purpose, so that all citizens of the Commonwealth, wherever residing, may be assured of the enjoyment of those fundamental rights and of protection against any infringement of the same.]

That Motion attracted support without committing any of the signatories to a definite plan. It merely asked that Her Majesty's Government should initiate within the Commonwealth the study of the practicability of a Commonwealth Convention of Human Rights, with appropriate investigatory organs and some sort of judicial tribunal which might give findings, if not judgments, on matters brought before it.

If those two ideas of Senator Cooray and that which is put on the Order Paper of the House with such widespread support could be studied a little more, there might then emerge from the Commonwealth, if not a restoration of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, its substitution, perhaps with a different authority, a different field of adjudication, but, nevertheless, something that would take its place and might embody the feeling so rapidly growing in the Commonwealth that it is now essential, in this association of people of every conceivable colour and a vast variety of religious creeds, that provision for the protection of the human rights of freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and the like, be embodied in a Common-weath constitution. I throw out that suggestion for consideration.

I conclude by echoing what the Minister of State has already said. In passing the Bill, as we shall undoubtedly do on Second Reading this afternoon, and no doubt through all its stages very rapidly thereafter, we extend to Ghana, now entering this new form of democratic constitution, all good wishes for the future, and we pledge ourselves to do all that we can to help her to accelerate her economic development and advance the standard of living and culture of her peoples.

4.1 p.m.

Mr. John Tilney: I do not wish to take up the time of the House for very long, but, like my

hon. Friend the Minister of State and the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Marquand), I want to say that hon. Members on both sides have many friends in Ghana—not only in the C.P.P., but in the Opposition parties; not only in Accra and that neighbourhood, but in the lovely country of the Ashanti and also in the far north. We all look forward to a prosperous and happy Republic of Ghana.
I believe that the difference in this Bill from what appeared in the case of India and Pakistan is for us in the United Kingdom a lesson. I hope that it will not be a weakening of the Commonwealth tie, but I think that it might be. With my hon. Friend the Minister of State, I welcome the news that Her Majesty and his Royal Highness the Prince Philip are to visit Ghana, Her Majesty going there as Head of the Commonwealth, as well as as Queen of the United Kingdom.
I believe that there is in the background of the thoughts of Ghanaians slight annoyance with the Press of this country and also at the make-up of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Some organs of the Press have been very unfair. The Prime Minister and the governing party in Ghana want to see law and order above all things, and this is not easy in a newly emerged territory. It may be easy for people in this country, which has had centuries of democracy but which has had one man or one woman, one vote, only for a comparatively small number of years, to forget that we had very firm government in past centuries and still called ourselves a democracy.
The governing party in Ghana, naturally, takes cognisance of some of the remarks which have been made in some organs of the British Press about so-called rigged elections. They regard those remarks as unfair, particularly as I am told that all ballot papers are printed on special security paper in the presence of representatives of the contesting political parties and that the representative of each party is allowed to put a secret mark known only to himself on the plate from which the ballot papers are printed, and a secret mark known only to the Government printer is also included. It is as well to bear in mind that in the Prime Minister of Ghana's own constituency, in Accra,


his votes went down. If there ever was a point where a rigged election would be expected, it would be in that constituency. There is also the knowledge in Ghana of the comments here about flogging, which proved to be completely unfounded.
Therefore, it is not surprising that Ghana, for the first time among the Commonwealth countries, has decided to have nothing more to do with the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. No new appeal will be registered with the Privy Council after 1st July, 1960, and no appeal from Ghana will be heard by the Privy Council after 1st July. 1961. I believe that there are only a comparatively few number of cases in the pipeline.
I am, however, worried over this action and its possible effect on the supply of capital for Ghana. I welcome what my hon. Friend the Minister of State said about the Colonial Stocks Act, but many investors have in the past taken cognisance of the right of appeal to the Privy Council and have thought of that as a potential safeguard.
Yet I cannot blame the Ghana Government for wishing to change. I have to remember that no African judge, not only from Ghana but from any other territory, has been made a member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, though I believe that the late Sir Henley Coussey, whom some of us knew so well and who was a most able man, might well have been made such had he lived.
I also have to remember that when Ghanaian cases were heard only three members of the Judicial Committee sat, as in other colonial cases, whereas in cases from Australia and Canada five members of the Judicial Committee sat. I am told, further, that the Chief Justice was not included. The Ghanaians remember also that their law deals with rather complicated land questions which are very different from what we are used to in this country.
Therefore, I sympathise, but still regret what has been done and, like the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East, I believe that we must take action in the next year or two to cement, if we possibly can, various Commonwealth ties by creating what, in effect, will be

Commonwealth supra-national agencies. As I would like to see a Commonwealth technical overseas service and an Order of Recognition of Service stemming from the Head of the Commonwealth, on the advice of her individual Prime Ministers, given to different individuals in the Commonwealth for their services, so I agree with the right hon. Gentleman and with the statesmen of Ceylon that we ought to look very carefully into creating a court of appeal for the Commonwealth.
I commend that idea once again to my hon. Friend so that out of possibly one or two mistakes of the past we can create ties not only of friendship but of mutual welfare for the Commonwealth in the future.

4.8 p.m.

Mr. Roy Mason: I, for one in the House, feel very sorry indeed that we are faced with this Bill. I am sorry because Ghana was our first African State to receive freedom and independence, and that occurred only three years ago. Yet within this very short time we are faced with providing a Bill in this Parliament, which will eventually become an Act, to allow Ghana to be a Republic within our Commonwealth.
This is not exactly a surprise to some of us. I was a member of the Parliamentary delegation which went out to Ghana in 1956 to witness the conduct of the electorate and the atmosphere prevailing at that time in the general election which determined freedom and independence for the Ghanaians. When we returned, and were faced with the Second Reading of the Ghana Independence Bill, some of us expressed misgivings about the situation over there and how quickly we were granting independence and freedom. I am pleased to see that some members of the delegation are present today, particularly my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Brigg (Mr. E. L. Mallalieu), who expressed some concern, though perhaps not in as strong terms as I did.
My two reasons at that time were: first, that it was a hasty decision; and, secondly, that the economy of the country was not viable enough and was not in such a state that it could look forward to a good economic future. The swiftness of the coming of independence meant that Prime Minister Kwame


Nkrumah had to pace that political advancement—

Mr. Ellis Smith: Could my hon. Friend inform us who appoints these deputations and to whom they report when they return?

Mr. Mason: If my hon. Friend had followed the discussions on Ghana, particularly in this Chamber, he need not have asked that question. This deputation was sent by the Foreign Office and the C.P.A. Commission was formed to select its members. I was one of the delegation. It was my first trip to West Africa. Many people might say that it was a case of the immature mind getting a shock. That was what the West African Press said. Nevertheless, I am entitled to my opinion and I hope that in future my hon. Friend will follow more closely affairs in West Africa.
With the hasty decision on independence Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the Prime Minister of Ghana, had to make sure that the pace of political advancement was kept up, and he has done exactly that. What is more, it had to be seen, and his supporters and countrymen made fully aware of the fact, that he would maintain that progress. Because there was not a strong enough economy, he was given an excuse to be firm.
Since independence, in order to make sure that there was a change, he immediately had his head put on the coinage and on stamps, erected a statue to himself in Accra, and lived in Christiansborg Castle. That was noticed and gave the impression to his countrymen and supporters that a change had taken place. I may be wrong, but I think that Dr. Kwame Nkrumah has always been seized with the idea that he was born to lead all Africans. Ghana was the first African State to be released from colonial bondage and his aim was to create a United States of Africa. [An HON. MEMBER: "There is nothing wrong with that."] There is nothing wrong with that, provided that it is not done in a dictatorial manner. That is why I am worried and have recently felt concerned. It meant that he must always remain in power. Hence we have witnessed a set of Acts being placed on the Statute Book to ensure his permanent leadership.
During the General Election in 1956 there were two platforms. The Conventional People's Party was fighting for centralised government, with which I agree. The National People's Party and the National Liberation Movement were fighting for regional government. When he got independence he recognised that these organisations, which had grown and still existed on a regional basis, were a menace to his political future. He also recognised that he had not captured the Ashanti country, the wealthiest section of Ghana. It was led by Assantehene, Chief of the Ashanti Tribe, who is a wealthy and influential person. He had also to break down the tribal strength in that area.
These, therefore, were the obstacles and the question was posed: how could he best break the strength and organisation of these groups? First, he brought in a Bill, which eventually became the Deportation Act. In effect, deportations could be carried out not subject to appeal or review in any form. He deported two wealthy Muslims and Ian Colvin of the Daily Telegraph—wealth and a European in Ghana—to prove to the Ashanti Tribe and all his followers that he did not need any more to have the consent of the chief, Assantehene; that he was now the supreme power in Ghana, and that the tribal organisation was now of no use. By that Act alone he started to break down the tribal organisations.
I did not agree with the feudal methods which existed and I was hoping all the time that he was doing this purely in the best interests of Parliamentary democracy and not for ulterior motives, which I suspect. Having shown that he was the power and proved to Assantehene and his followers that there was now no need to consult the chief of that great tribe—this wealthy and influential person—he started to cripple Assantehene's power and break down the tribal organisation.
His second Act was to ban political parties with a tribal, religious or a regional basis. Therefore, the Muslim Party became illegal. The Northern People's Party, based on the Northern Territories, also became illegal and the National Liberation Movement, which was not in itself regionally based, but all of whose strength came from the Ashanti country, had to go. All we then


got was the United Opposition Party. I thought again that this might be in the best interests of Parliamentary democracy. There would be a two-party system, the United Opposition Party having cut out the Muslims, the Northern People's Party and the National Liberation Movement; but then another Act brought in preventive detention and 40 of the United Opposition Party members were put into prison.
Having worked in this fashion, he ensured that the Opposition was deprived of many of its leaders. This might have been part of a preconceived plan, partly to make clear that he was ready to become the republican leader. I do not know whether Professor Busia is still in Ghana or has left the country—[An HON. MEMBER: "He is not there now."]— but he was one of the influential leaders and was doing a great job in trying to maintain Parliamentary opposition in Ghana. I am very sorry that he has been forced to leave. I understand that it is doubtful whether he will return.
For these reasons, I am sorry that this Bill has been necessary. To me, it is most disturbing. A Republic means that it is but a short pace from dictatorship. That is not a good advertisement for all we have supposedly done when the country was known as the Gold Coast. I recognise that our type of Parliamentary democracy cannot be planted anywhere. It depends on the atmosphere prevailing at the time of independence, the state of the nation's economy, what economic progress is required, how fast it must be achieved, and so on. Those are the factors which creep in when we consider whether we can ensure Parliamentary democracy of our type in some of these African States. Special consideration should have been given to the fact that this was the first African Colony to achieve independence and it would obviously be a signal for the rest.
I feel concerned because it would appear that the Prime Minister of Ghana was determined from the outset that he was not going to lose office, even if it meant a drift towards dictatorship rather than a Parliamentary democracy. This is my sober and saddening conclusion about what has happened so far. Other Colonies are watching this trend, some with dismay. One, which is not very far distant from Ghana, is Nigeria. My

right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Marquand)— perhaps vaguely but, nevertheless, it was there—showed some concern when he talked about a Commonwealth court, or Commonwealth institution, which might have to develop for the protection of human rights. Therefore, some consideration should be given to these trends. We should try to learn from this example. We should try, first, to give our freedom-seeking Colonies a better economic start to begin with. Secondly, they should have a chance to fight dictatorships emerging with a recognised Parliamentary Opposition.
Because this Bill is going through, and a Republic is inevitable, I hope that Dr. Kwame Nkrumah will not press his political advancement too far. I earnestly hope that he will stay in the Commonwealth, but we ought to be doing more than we are doing to help Ghana. Our record regarding the Volta River project has been tragic. I put Questions in the House many times to the Prime Minister, asking that Ghana should be assisted with economic aid, particularly in the Volta River project, but very little progress has been made so far. Ghanaians, looking back upon what must still seem to many of them to be imperialist Britain, cannot be satisfied that we have tried to help them since independence. There has been no real progress. The Russians keep sending trade delegations there to assess the potentialities of various schemes, and we cannot blame them if they think that there is a chance of weaning Ghana from the Commonwealth at some time in the future. I hope that it is still not too late to accelerate the Volta River project, which will help Ghana enormously.
I hope that the Government will watch developments in this part of West Africa and try harder to give more tangible assistance than has been given in the past three years. I hope, also, that what was the Gold Coast of West Africa and is now Ghana of the Commonwealth will for ever remain with us.

4.20 p.m.

Mr. John Stonehouse: I wish to dissociate myself from the patronising parts of the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason). It was a very interesting speech and I am glad that he made it in


this Chamber, but I think that be was on entirely the wrong line when he took the attitude that it was for us in this country to decide just when people should have independence and what sort of institutions should be imposed upon them. I submit that that is the wrong attitude altogether.
If there is the will on the part of a dependent people to run their own affairs, and that will is expressed through their own well-developed political organisations, then it is incumbent upon us to respond to that will and enable them to build the independent institutions for their own country according to their own methods, hoping, however, that they will follow our example and the example of more developed democracies and have democratic institutions and freedom before the law.

Mr. Mason: I am much obliged to my hon. Friend for giving way. I have no desire to start a political wrangle on this side of the House, but I want to have the record straight. If we have had under our wing for fifty years a Colony the economy of which we have exploited and built up for our purposes, when that Colony comes towards independence it is our duty to make sure that it has a good start economically. That is why I say that what was done was hasty in this respect.

Mr. Stonehouse: If we were to wait until the sort of standards my hon. Friend envisages were reached, we might have to wait for so long that the people would rise against us in sheer desperation. We do not want that. If my hon. Friend will look at developments in education, peasant agriculture and economic affairs generally, he will find that on those three fronts there has been more progress in Ghana during the last three years than in any three-year period under colonialism.
When a country obtains its political independence, that political independence acts as a sort of catalyst on the people of the country. They are all the more anxious to work harder to make a success of the resources they have within their own country. I add one more point to make the comparison clear. If an attempt had been made to impose colonialism on the Gold Coast, as it

was, for a longer period—the sort of period which, apparently, my hon. Friend would have welcomed—there certainly would have been very much bloodshed in the Gold Coast and there would have been very many more arbitrary arrests and detentions without trial than there have been in the past three years.
We should welcome the Bill as a stage, perhaps the final stage, in the emergence of Ghana as a nation. My hon. Friend referred to the problems of tribalism. I am glad that the Prime Minister, Dr. Nkrumah, and his party have been energetic in dealing with the feudal elements in Ghana which, at one stage, were endangering the emergence of Ghana as a nation. In the early stages of independence, when the twin props of colonialism and tribalism are breaking down, it is necessary that there should be a strong central force which can establish national institutions and keep the nation together.
In the Congo, there is a great danger that, when Belgian colonial rule is removed, chat great nation may break into different tribal units. I hope that when the Congo achieves its independence in a few weeks it will be possible for a strong political leader there to emerge and establish the national institutions and central control which will prevent the fragmentation of that great nation into separate tribal units. Shortly after independence, there was that danger in Ghana, and I am glad that it has been avoided.
The attitude which some people in this country, notably certain newspapers, have had towards Ghana in the last few years has been very regrettable. In these days when the number of genuine democracies in the whole world can be counted on the fingers of four hands, it is wonderful that in Ghana, a very new nation, there is democracy and government by consent. This is a tribute to the leaders who emerged in Ghana both before and after independence. It is a tribute to their energetic leadership and the strong party organisation which is active there as a force for coherence in the nation as a whole, and it is a tribute, also, to the enthusiasm of the people of Ghana to make their independence work.
Those who have engaged in this campaign of vilification during the past


few years should look at the results of the referendum which has just taken place. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley will examine those results. He will see that as a result of a free vote in an election which was supervised very properly there was, in 103 out of 104 constituencies, a majority for the new Constitution, and 102 constituencies returned majorities for Dr. Nkrumah as against Dr. Danquah, the Opposition presidential candidate. There is universal suffrage in Ghana with about 2 million electors, 1,140,000 of whom voted, an overall percentage of 54 per cent.
My hon. Friend pointed out that the C.P.P. did not have a great deal of support at one stage in Ashanti. It is interesting to note from the election results that the C.P.P. and Dr. Nkrumah had very big majorities in the Ashanti area. In a place like Brong-Ahafo there was an 80 per cent. poll, and in the Ashanti area itself there was a 70 per cent. poll, indicating that the people of Ashanti were anxious to record their votes and anxious to vote for the C.P.P. and the new Constitution.
In Accra itself there was a 34 per cent. poll, which indicates that many people were prepared to abstain. In our own country, at the last municipal elections many people abstained from voting. Some may say that this is a sign of maturity. Indeed, I should be very unhappy about the recent referendum in Ghana if the percentage poll had been very high. If it had been 98 per cent., I should have been very concerned indeed. The fact that many people chose to abstain rather than vote indicates that they have freedom of choice.
If hon. Members opposite are thinking that the new Constitution is coming in without the consent of the people, they should reflect on the fact that about 50 per cent. of the electorate voted for the new Constitution and for Dr. Nkrumah, whereas at the last General Election in this country only 38·9 per cent. of the electorate voted for the Conservative Party. I think that the supporters of Dr. Nkrumah could boast—[Laughter.]— it is a tenable argument—that there is a greater measure of support for the new Constitution and Dr. Nkrumah in

Ghana than there is for the Conservative Party in Britain.
There is criticism of the way in which the Opposition are treated in Ghana, and I should like those people who are critical, and in particular my hon. Friend, to look at the Ghanaian Press. He will see that the Opposition has every opportunity to express itself very forcibly. Indeed, the Ashanti Pioneer, in a recent editorial, referred to what it called the monstrous atrocities in Ghana and the disrespect in which Ghana was held in the eyes of the world. These words which the Ashanti Pioneer used are every bit as strong as the words used in the opposition Press in Britain. Perhaps my hon. Friend does not know that the Ashanti Pioneer is actually subsidised by the State itself through a loan from the Industrial Development Corporation.
I welcome the fact that Ghana is remaining within the Commonwealth. I think that Ghana can make a very good and indeed a very valuable contribution, and I am also very glad that the Queen and Prince Philip are visiting Ghana next year. This perhaps brings in a new relationship between the monarchy and the new republican members of the Commonwealth, a relationship which I think we shall all be glad to see.
As to the future, I believe that it is urgently necessary that economic aid to Ghana should be increased, but I should not like anybody to assume that Ghana has always been dependent on charitable gifts from this country or any other country. In fact, if the records of the sterling area are referred to over the last few years, one notices that Ghana has been a net lender to the United Kingdom, even including private capital which has been transferred from this country.
It has been said that Ghana's economic programme needs help from outside, as indeed it does. It urgently needs this help. The minimum five-year plan envisages expenditure of £125 million, and with the Volta Dam project, this will be increased by £225 million. We need to give the maximum amount of aid to Ghana in the development of these enterprises. I wonder whether the Commonwealth has the institutions which can enable this aid to be given. Do we not need institutions which can give technical aid to a country like Ghana? Do we not need a Commonwealth Bank to help


to channel all this economic aid? Do we not need a shaking up and a great improvement in the rather rickety arrangements in the Commonwealth Relations Department here? Does not that Department need to be extended and enlarged to be able to meet these vastly increased responsibilities?
I want to raise another question which is of immediate importance, and that is the issue by the Ghana Government of passports to citizens of other countries within the Commonwealth to enable them to travel to Ghana. This is an urgent question, because in the High Commission Territories at present there are 20 political refugees who are asking for permission to travel to Ghana. This is a question which vitally affects the relationships between the various members of the Commonwealth, and, indeed, Ghana's membership of it. We are discussing the membership of the Commonwealth by Ghana, and I submit that if that membership is to be of any significance at all, Ghana, like any other individual member of the Commonwealth, must be entitled to take advantage of the new recognition of Commonwealth citizenship as recognised in the British Nationality Act, 1948.
If Ghana is prepared to do that in regard to citizens of the Union of South Africa who wish to escape from the High Commission Territories and travel to Ghana, I hope that the Government will do everything in their power to assist Ghana to implement this objective. It is a right which Ghana is perfectly entitled legally to exercise, and I hope that Her Majesty's Government will not allow the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasa-land to interfere with the legal right of Ghana.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Gordon Touche): I find it difficult to relate this to the scope of the Bill.

Mr. Stonehouse: I respect your decision, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, but I submit that the membership of the Commonwealth by Ghana is one of the aspects of this Bill, and the use which Ghana makes of that membership should be considered in the wider interpretation of the Bill.
Like my right hon. and hon. Friends, I welcome this Bill, and I hope that a message will go out from this House that

we wish Ghana well in her political and economic development and hope that she will continue to prosper.

4.37 p.m.

Mr. Donald Wade: It would be unfortunate if the House gave its approval to the Bill grudgingly, because of expressions of suspicion, and I am sure that it would be a mistake if we became involved in arguments for or against Dr. Nkrumah's party. At the same time, we must be realistic. I would say that, on the whole, Ghana had had a fairly good start, so far as its economy is concerned. It is in a more favourable position than some of our Colonies and former Colonial Territories, thanks very largely to the fact that world prices of cocoa have remained comparatively stable. That has been a great help to Ghana, and, therefore, I say that the economy is comparatively viable, though there has been, nevertheless, considerable economic aid from this country.
The Volta Dam project is partly a matter of prestige. When I was there, I was not altogether convinced of the economic value of that scheme, although I hope that it will prosper. I am merely saying, in reply to the hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason), that I think he was a little unfair in implying that the economy of Ghana was very far from being viable, and that this country had not done anything like what it should have done.
Secondly, we should realise that countries like Ghana are in this difficulty in creating political unity. When Africa was divided up by the European Powers, in the last century, they gave very little thought to natural boundaries. One has only to look at the map to see that the boundaries cut right through the middle of tribes, which makes it extremely difficult, when a territory gains independence, for those in power to create a natural political unity. We must realise that. Democracy flourishes only when there are certain underlying common loyalties which are stronger than the differences between one party and another.
No one could be more enthusiastic in his support for the democratic system than I, but I can see the difficulties that inevitably face a country such as Ghana


where, frankly, the boundaries are not natural boundaries and where there is difficulty in creating natural political unity. I am somewhat disturbed at some of the events there and some of the things done by the Ghana Government. I was not entirely happy about all that I learnt when I was out there a year ago, but I appreciate the difficulty which emerging territories must face where the boundaries are not what I would call natural political boundaries.
In conclusion, I support the remarks of the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Marquand) on the subject of a Convention of Human Rights. I know the difficulties, but I should like to see a Convention of Human Rights which applies to the whole of the Commonwealth. I should very much like to see some kind of judicial body to replace the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council which would assist in upholding the essential principles of a Convention of Human Rights. I am sure that we should strive in the Commonwealth to create some such body. If the Commonwealth is to survive, there must be not only a friendliness between the various territories in the Commonwealth, but a community of ideas and some common principles. I hope that Ghana will uphold these principles in the years which lie ahead.

4.43 p.m.

Mr. A. Fenner Brockway: I did not intend to take part in the debate because I expected that the whole House would give such a welcome to the Bill that it would be unnecessary, but I feel impelled to do so by the speech of the hon. Member for Barns-ley (Mr. Mason). The hon. Member will accept my statement that no one in this House is more concerned about personal liberties than I am. I have expressed to Dr. Nkrumah, both privately and publicly, my concern about deportations and detentions which have taken place without trial in Ghana. This hurt me very deeply, and Dr. Nkrumah is well aware of that. I would say to the hon. Member, however, that if one is to be critical of what is done in a new African country in extraordinarily difficult circumstances, one must show great fairness in denunciation of the repudiation of personal liberties wherever it occurs.
I make it a principle that I never go to a country where detention or deportation takes place without trial without expressing to the head of that country my personal feelings on the matter. I have done it in Egypt, in the case of Colonel Nasser, in Yugoslavia, in the case of Marshal Tito, and repeatedly in the case of Catholics and others who have been imprisoned in Communist countries. Only when one stands for that principle impartially and universally has one the right to criticise its denial in a new country like Ghana.
I say to my hon. Friends on the benches opposite that if Dr. Nkrumah felt bitterly about the criticism expressed in the Press of this country, and particularly from the benches opposite at the time of deportations and detentions in Ghana, it was because at that moment detentions and deportations were taking place in British Colonial Territories without a voice of protest being raised on the other side of the House. In the same month that Dr. Nkrumah was criticised for his actions in Ghana more than 50 trade union officials in Northern Rhodesia were exiled without charge and without trial. The story of Kenya is well-known. The story is well known of Dr. Banda, of Nyasaland, who was imprisoned for 13 months without trial. I am not emphasising these points to be provocative, but I say that we are insincere and dangerously near hypocrisy if we denounce these things in Ghana in the difficult circumstances of the birth of that territory, and do not equally denounce them when they take place in British territories in the Commonwealth.
I want to deal with two things arising from what the hon. Member for Barnsley said. The first concerns Dr. Nkrumah. I was his friend when he was a student in London. He had been to universities in America and had proved his ability in scholarship there. He was at the London University when an invitation came to him to go to Ghana to become secretary of the nationalist movement in that territory. I remember his doubts— whether he should stay here and continue his studies, or whether he should go to Ghana. He chose the latter, but when he reached Ghana he discovered—and this is very relevant to the points which the hon. Member for Barnsley raised—that the nationalist movement was under the control of the privileged


sections of that community. It was under he control of the chiefs and their circles and of the wealthy and professional classes.
When Dr. Nkrumah became secretary of that movement he set out to make it a movement of the common people, of the villagers, of the market women in the towns and, in particular, of the younger generation which was developing. That was the point when Dr. Nkrumah first came into conflict with the powers of chieftainship, of the professional and privileged classes in Ghana which persist in the Opposition to this day.
I went to Ghana a year before it obtained its independence, because there was great danger of civil war between the Opposition, which was centred mostly in the Ashanti, and Dr. Nkrumah's party and the population of Accra. I have to say this, and I say it quietly, that when I met leaders of the Opposition I have never been in such an atmosphere of violence as I experienced then. I want to dissociate Dr. Danguah from this; he was at Accra, and not at Kumasi. where I met the leaders of the Opposition. For one hour they would not hear of a peaceful constitutional and electoral solution of the position in Ghana. Only after an hour, during which one tried to quieten the temper of violence which was among them, was I able to get them to agree that if Dr. Nkrumah would accept an election before independence was declared they would not resort to violence prior to that event.
I acknowledge that I had a good deal of difficulty in getting Dr. Nkrumah to accept that proposal. He said, "We have just had an election in Ghana. Why should we have an election again before independence?" Eventually, a solution was reached by which Dr. Nkrumah agreed that he would have an election before independence on condition that the Government in this country agreed that within a limited period, if he attained a majority, independence would be established. The Minister of State for Commonwealth Relations knows quite well that that was the basis of agreement by which independence was introduced to Ghana.

Mr. Brian Harrison: I want to get one matter quite clear. At that time, who was Colonial Secretary—the hon. Member or somebody else?

Mr. A. C. Manuel: The hon. Member should not be so cheeky. Would he have preferred strife?

Mr. Brockway: I do not know whether the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr. B. Harrison) is being sarcastic—

Mr. Manuel: That is all he is—and ignorant.

Mr. Brockway: The hon. Member for Maldon must have been aware that the right hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Lennox-Boyd) was Secretary of State for the Colonies during that period. He may not know that before I went to Ghana I saw the right hon. Gentleman and discussed this matter with him. I discussed it with him when I came back.
If I have given any impression of claiming any more credit for myself than I ought to claim, I can say only that I did not mean to do so. On that occasion there was co-operation in this solution, when very often in other matters I was in great antagonism to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. I am sorry if I gave the hon. Member that impression.
I am saying that it is only if that background is understood that the position of Dr. Nkrumah can be understood today. He became Prime Minister in a society where the old aristocratic circles of chieftainship, the old privileged classes and the old professional classes were in intense antagonism to his great desire to reflect the view of the common people.
My hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley should appreciate the quite extraordinary educational, health, social and economic changes which have taken place since Dr. Nkrumah has been Prime Minister., and not merely since the years of independence but during the years before of internal self-government. I remember the head of the Department of National Development, an Englishman, saying to me, after three years of internal self-government, that he had been asked to do more constructive work in those three years than in the twelve previous years during which we had held that office. To appreciate that, it is enough to go there and see not merely the roads, and the schools and the hospitals being built, the dispensaries in distant villages, and the water supplies


being taken to those villages, but also to see the mass adult education movement.
This was not just a matter of teaching adults to read and write, but of gathering them together in their enthusiasm for hygienic reforms, for the building of roads from villages in the forests to the arterial roads, and for social and economic change. These were things which would have inspired all of us. If Dr. Nkrumah became in the minds of the people of Ghana an embodiment of that spirit, and of the spirit of independence, it was because of the leadership he gave them in all these respects.
I hope very much that the proposal will be carried out of adopting for the Commonwealth as a whole, and not just for Ghana, a Magna Carta, a code of conduct reflecting racial equality and personal liberties. If the Commonwealth is to go on, it must not just depend upon the sentiment of the past, it must not be just a matter of the convenience of today, it must accept basic principles. If we could adopt this proposal by which there would be a code of principles for all the territories in the Commonwealth and if we had a method by which it could be given expression by right of appeal to a central authority, the Commonwealth might become a long-living thing in which we could take great pride.
I ask my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley to forgive me if I have been critical in my reply to his speech, but no one who has known Dr. Nkrumah as I have known him, or has known the developments which have been taking place in Ghana, could have been silent and have failed to express these views.

4.57 p.m.

Mr. F. M. Bennett: The remarks of the hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway) have prompted me to make a few comments. Every sensible person would, and should, as he said, be extremely sympathetic to the difficulties an emergent nation anywhere might have and might well be prepared to forgive and appreciate, without any taint of hypocrisy, that in the early stages of development many things may have to take place which we would hope would not be a lasting feature of those countries.
What is concerning some of us, who are just as deeply attached to the cause of the emerging nations in Africa as the hon. Member for Eton and Slough, is not that these things took place there in the early stages, but that there seems to be a growing propensity for them to continue. I do not want to say much more because, as has been said, it would be a pity if we spoiled today by too much criticism.
Yet what is worrying is that although things are calming down, and Dr. Nkrumah's position is growing stronger, there is this tendency for some of these undemocratic forms to be written into the constitution. There has not been a slackening of the occurrence of these things as we might have expected when birth-pains decreased. In fact, some of these objectionable aspects appear to be on the increase. I hope that when the hon. Member for Eton and Slough visits Ghana again he will give expression to this anxiety about writing into the Constitution such matters as detention without trial, not as a matter of emergency but as a permanent part of the country's legal structure. These are the sort of things which have given some of us cause for concern.
I say, however, that at this stage, as I have said about other independent Commonwealth countries, the less we criticise the way they run their own affairs the better. I am sure that the hon. Member for Eton and Slough will give me the credit of saying that I am logical in that approach, although we have recently clashed in the matter and extent of the terms in which we have interpreted its application. Today may well be the last reasonable opportunity to voice even the mild criticisms I have made, and which have been made by the hon. Members for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) and Eton and Slough. For we must regard Ghana as wholly an independent country and judge our words even more carefully than we have up to now.
There has been a deserved tribute to the material work done in Ghana, on roads and schools and other things. I agree with that tribute, as we all should, but we should also remember that there have been many examples in recent history in which totalitarian States have had great successes in building such material things as roads and schools, and


that that is not the sort of test for the kind of moral issues which we have been discussing this afternoon. Mussolini gave Italy and her colonies the best system of roads they had ever had, but that does not enable him to pass the democracy test which we have been discussing today.
So I hope that we shall see Ghana and the other Commonwealth countries and even ourselves pursuing more and more liberal, democratic, constitutional forms of Government and that there will not continue tendencies which have been a feature not only in Ghana but in a number of Commonwealth countries which have gained their liberty since the last war.

5.2 p.m.

Mr. E. L. Mallalieu: I had not intended to intervene in this debate, but I shall do so very shortly, following the most well chosen words of the hon. Member for Torquay (Mr. F. M. Bennett). I want to say absolutely nothing which could possibly be interpreted as being unfriendly towards Ghana, because I regard this debate as being an opportunity for me and for many others —indeed, all who have spoken today— to express the warmth of our friendship for the people of Ghana and our sympathy with them in their difficulties, which are bound to confront any emergent State.
I was particularly impressed, as we always are, by the sincerity of my hon. Friend the Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway) in his remarks. Because of that, I want to tell him of the experience I had, very near the time of which he was speaking, of the feelings of the Ashanti leaders. I spent hours with these people, and I am amazed that somebody who is as sympathetic and as sincere as my hon. Friend could have come to conclusions so utterly different from those to which I came at that lime. I speak with great humility in his presence, having this opposite view from his, for I have very great respect for him, but I say that these men were not men of violence.
We talked to them for hours on end, and ever since then, on my not infrequent visits to Ghana, I have met with the same men or others from the same camp, particularly Dr. Danquah, whom my

hon. Friend excluded from his category of violent men. These men are for the most part woolly-haired liberals. They are not violent men. I have always claimed to be a liberal, because that is a man of generosity and the word is generally spelt with a small "1". These men are woolly-haired liberals to this day, but they have been left no real opportunity to express their opinions, except opportunities of violence. That is something which makes me extremely sad. Ever since independence, remarkable strides have been made towards putting the country on its feet, with schools, roads, and the university college of Lagon, which is a monument to faith in the future of Ghana and something for which I give the present Government full marks.
But that is not the point. These things can happen even under Hitlers and Mussolinis, as has already been said. The point is that whenever an effective opposition shows itself as likely to raise itself up, the Government immediately pounces. A visit is made to the house at four o'clock in the morning and the man concerned disappears—for ever, unless he is on the verge of death. Only one has so far been let out of detention; and he was left on his own doorstep pretty well dead in the early hours. There can be detention without trial-only for a time, it is true; but it can be renewed indefinitely.
There are only two potentially effective members of the Opposition free at the present time, and they would be put away if they made their opposition effective. If I am wrong, let it be denied. Let an independent person visit the prisons where these men are detained. As we know, men are detained elsewhere: but even Dr. Banda—whose detention I consider to have been entirely wrong—was allowed his books and detained in a comparatively civilised manner. But these men are chopping stones, for the rest of their lives, on less than a prison diet. That is my belief. I cannot prove it, but I have very strong evidence to show that it is true.
It is that that makes me sad. Now Ghana wants to become a Republic, and I am glad that that is so, for things are being done there in the name of the Queen which I do not like to see being done anywhere. Whether it wants to be


a Republic or not, we all wish Ghana well. The elections conducted there are models. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Tilney) spoke of the elections in Accra district as being models because they showed a decrease in the poll, which suggested that they had not been rigged. The election just before independence was not rigged; it was a model. We were sent out there to see that it was properly conducted.
Everything was marvellous, in spite of the difficulties of running an election in a place where one had never been held before on such a scale. The corruption— the phenomenal corruption—had happened months beforehand and had regulated the result. The election itself was perfect. This view as to corruption is not my view but the view of a judicial committee commission. The Cocoa Purchasing Company, a governmental body into which the Government poured money, was in fact staffed by people who were the agents of the political party in power and who were working all over the country exclusively for that party. That is the way it happened. It would be naive if we were to say that "the election was perfect, therefore all was well."
A great deal is well in Ghana, and it is because I am friendly towards Ghana that I venture to express the hope that, contrary to the apparent tendency of enshrining the bad features of the present régime in the constitution, there may be emerging very shortly another tendency towards individual freedom, towards the allowing of the expression of views, generally and not only in the Ashanti Pioneer. It is one of the quirks of the dictatorship in Ghana that it allows an Opposition to exist—perhaps for the shop window; that I do not know—and allows it to say some strong words. But if the criticism in Parliament or in the Ashanti Pioneer were effective, it would, I suspect, soon be put out of the way.
Nevertheless, I concede that point to my hon. Friend the Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Stonehouse). We can help in these matters of the restoration of democratic and human rights in Ghana and elsewhere. Heaven knows that in our own Commonwealth there is a sufficient lack of those rights to make us feel that there is a need for something to be done there.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Marquand) stressed the idea that we should have a peripatetic Commonwealth court. After all, in these days it is as easy for the comparatively elderly judges who adorn the Board of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to go round the Commonwealth as it was for the judges who first went on circuit in this country.
One of our greatest exports has been Parliamentary government and common law. If we—and by "we" I mean the Commonwealth countries—allow ourselves to go back, instead of concentrating on consolidating the common law and making its interpretation uniform in the Commonwealth, we shall owe a grave debt to history. We should take the initiative now. This would interest even countries like Canada which have left the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. They would be interested in this because they have a stake in this and want to see this common law maintained, and the interpretation of it made authoritative throughout the Commonwealth.
I warmly welcome the Bill. Though my right hon. Friend enjoined us not to express opinions about whether Commonwealth countries should accept republican status, if it is the wish of a Commonwealth country for such a status I welcome it. If it is the wish of Ghana to have a republican constitution and not the republican constitution— and it was a republican constitution, and not the "Bing" Constitution which they are now to have, which they voted for in the referendum—that is what I want, because I want the happiness of the Ghanian people under a government which will be of their choice and as free as any in the Commonwealth.

5.13 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations (Mr. Richard Thompson): We have had a short but interesting and useful debate, and I do not think that it would accord with the mood of the House if I made a long speech about the various things which have been said, many of which were in the nature of interesting personal reflections on the internal situation in Ghana.
The purpose of the Bill is limited, though important. As was said by my


hon. Friend the Minister of State, it is an enabling Bill to provide for the continuation of the existing arrangements between Ghana and the United Kingdom, notwithstanding the accession of Ghana to a republican form of government. In passing, may I make the point that the transition to republican status does not confer additional independence on Ghana. She is indeed fully independent now. It is a change of form, and we should realise that and not get the idea that this is independence with something added to it.
I agree with the hon. and learned Member for Brigg (Mr. E. L. Mallalieu) and with my hon. Friend the Member for Torquay (Mr. F. M. Bennett) that this is not an occasion for recriminations or for the venting of criticisms of internal policies, on which I have no doubt hon. Members have their own views. Surely this is an occasion on which to speed the Bill on its way and to demonstrate that, so far as it lies in our power, we in this House want to give a fair wind to the new Ghana and see her successful in her proud status as a member of the Commonwealth, a republican status notwithstanding.
The only point to which I think I need refer in detail was the interesting suggestion made by the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Marquand) who, along with other hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavetree (Mr. Tilney), was anxious that the Commonwealth concept should perhaps find renewed expression in some kind of "Commonwealth court"; some kind of judicial body which might in time act in substitution for the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.

Mr. Marquand: More than that.

Mr. A. Thompson: The right hon. Gentleman interpolates "More than that", but that is the point with which I want to deal because it was referred to by a number of hon. Members and has been in the news recently. This has the merit of being a constructive proposition deserving most careful study, and I assure the right hon. Gentleman that careful study is already being devoted to it. I am sure that he realises it is a

complicated proposition. It is a question which cannot be examined only by us. It is a question for each member of the Commonwealth to join us in examining if it sees merit in the proposal.
We may find that the idea will not find appeal in some quarters, while others may welcome it and wish to develop the suggestion with a view to converting it into some practicable proposition. We shall miss no opportunity to pursue it further in an appropriate form. We shall do so with Commonwealth Governments who feel so minded on the subject.
The other point to which recurring reference was made was summed up by my hon. Friend the Member for Wavertree. He wanted to see the cementing of Commonwealth ties with new Commonwealth agencies for aid, technical and economic assistance, and matters of that kind. I agree with him, and it is perhaps appropriate that when we have completed our discussions on the Bill we shall turn to another one, the Commonwealth Teachers Bill, which is a practical expression, at any rate in one sphere, of our determination that this community of nations shall have even stronger ties linking it together than those simply of sentiment and tradition.
It only remains for me to say that I think that the hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) is too pessimistic. Look at the Indian example. I see no reason why we should necessarily equate a republican form of government with a tendency towards dictatorship. In India we have a splendid example of democracy and a republican form of government going along together and doing exceedingly well.
It only remains for me to echo the good wishes expressed by my hon. Friend the Minister of State at the start of the debate, in relation to our feelings and hopes for Ghana, and to commend the Bill to the House and ask for it to be given a Second Reading.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Gibson-Watt.]

Committee Tomorrow.

Orders of the Day — MERCHANT SHIPPING (MIMCOY LIGHTHOUSE) BELL

Order for Second Reading read.

5.20 p.m.

The Minister of State for Commonwealth Relations (Mr. C. J. M. Alport): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
During the last few days I have been plagued by a song which my children keep singing. I am not quite clear of the words, but they seem to run as follows:
Why was Minnie coy, boys?
Why was Minnie coy?
I shall do my best to explain why that was the case.
Minicoy Island is a small coral island between the Laccadive and Maldive Islands, off the south-west coast of India. It became part of the territory of the Republic of India after the passing of the Indian Independence Act in 1947, but the lighthouse, which had been constructed by the Board of Trade in 1885 with funds provided by the Public Works Loan Commissioners, remained the property of the United Kingdom Government. Hon. Members may think this rather strange, but I am advised that as the Government of India Act, 1935, did not transfer the ownership of the Minicoy Light to the then Government of India it followed that the title to this property remained undisturbed by the 1947 Act.
In 1950, the Government of India suggested that as the lighthouse was situated on Indian territory it was not appropriate that it should be administered by an agency functioning outside India, and they asked that it should be transferred "free of cost and with all its assets" to be administered by them.
The United Kingdom Government considered this request to be a proper one, and the management of the lighthouse was taken over by the Indian Government on 2nd April, 1956, it being understood that the legal transfer of the property and the clearance of the financial issues would be dealt with afterwards. At the end of 1958 the Indian Government asked for the early enactment of legislation to permit this to be done, and were promised that it would be introduced at the first opportunity. We have informed

them of the action that we are now asking the House to take, namely to approve the Bill.
The financial position is rather complicated, and I will do my best to explain it. To do so I will give some of the history attaching to the earlier period of its ownership. The Minicoy Light was, from the time it was built until the Indian Government took over its management in 1956, administered jointly with the Great and Little Basses Lights, off the coast of Ceylon, first by the Board of Trade and then by the Ministry of Transport, under the category of a "Colonial Light". The cost of their upkeep and also the dues which were levied in the United Kingdom and in various Commonwealth countries on vessels deriving benefit from the lighthouses were brought to account in the General Lighthouse Fund, as provided by the Merchant Shipping (Mercantile Marine Fund) Act, 1898. Since April, 1956, the Indian Government have borne the cost of running the Minicoy Light but the dues, which have continued to be collected by us, are held in a separate account in the General Lighthouse Fund.
A calculation of the other assets in respect of the Minicoy Light as at 2nd April, 1956 has been made. The figure is assessed at £15,000, but it is not possible to determine the amount precisely because, as I have stated previously, no distinction was made between Basses dues and Minicoy dues in the accounts of the General Lighthouse Fund before 2nd April, 1956. The sum of £15,000, which we are now to pay to the Indian Government, was readied in the following way. First, an assessment was made of what the net excess of income over expenditure on the Basses and Minicoy Lights would have been if a separate fund had been maintained down to 2nd April, 1956. This figure amounts to £116,000. From this falls to be deducted a capital sum of £62,000, assessed by the Government Actuary for pension liability which has accrued in respect of the staff of the joint lighthouse service to April, 1956.
The balance of £54,000 was then divided between the Basses and Minicoy Lights on the basis of the relative costs, which were specially ascertained, of operation and maintenance of each establishment over a period of seven years


up to 2nd April, 1956. The proportion relating to Minicoy was found to be 28 per cent. and this percentage of £54,000 amounts to about £15,000. That sum, plus the dues collected since 2nd April, 1956, estimated at about £10,000, and interest at the rate of 4 per cent. per annum on these moneys will, if the Bill is passed, be paid to the Indian Government from the General Lighthouse Fund. That is the story behind the Bill and its financial provisions. The Government of India has been given full information regarding this Bill and the proposed financial settlement and we have no reason to think that they regard it as other than fair and reasonable. I hope, therefore, that the House will not feel that a few minutes of its time has been wasted in dealing with what is a rather intriguing and in some degree a romantic subject—a lighthouse away in the middle of the Indian Ocean—and I hope that it will approve this minor piece of legislation, which tidies up and regularises the existing situation.

5.26 p.m.

Mr. R. J. Mellish: I rise to indicate that hon. Members on this side of the House welcome and support the Bill and wish to get it through its remaining stages as rapidly as the hon. Gentleman wishes. We are indebted to him for the clear way in which he has explained the Bill. As he said, there is a certain degree of romance about it. I suppose the Minister of Transport would have moved the Second Reading of the Bill had he not been upstairs in Committee with my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn). There is not much that one can say on the Bill, apart from the fact that it brings the Government of India and ourselves that much closer together, except perhaps that it means that the Minister of Transport will give up at least one of his many jobs. As I understand it, his Department was responsible for running this lighthouse.
In a way, I am glad that he was not the Minister who moved the Second Reading, because I am convinced that he would have conveyed to the House the impression that, by way of hovercraft or some other new machine, he was personally responsible for putting the light on and off. I cannot believe that he would have allowed such a

golden chance to go by without taking some personal credit. Instead of that we have had the Minister of State, moving the Second Reading with kindly courtesy, and in a sensible tone. We are grateful to him for that, and we shall support the Bill.

5.29 p.m.

Mr. Brian Harrison: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) for explaining why the Minister of Transport and the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) were not here. I began to be extremely suspicious, and wondered why a colonial light, which comes under the control of the Ministry of Transport, should have its legislation introduced by the Minister of State for Commonwealth Relations. The only reason I could think of was that it was as a result of a trip that my hon. Friend the Minister of State made to the Maldive Islands a few months ago that these negotiations had been completed with the Indian Government. Alas, he has disillusioned us about that. He has missed an opportunity to tell us a good story.
This is a fascinating subject. This lighthouse is between two groups of islands—the Maldives and the Laccadives. In fact, this island of Minicoy would appear to belong to the Maldives because now Malk, the language of the Maldives, is spoken there and two of the five castes are very similar to those of the Maldives.
I wonder whether my hon. Friend can explain that there is no distress in the Maldives about this piece of Indian colonisation, as one might almost call it, quite close to the shores of the Maldives Atolls? That is one of the things I should be grateful if he would clear up. The thought of a battle in these treacherous waters in the next few months—and treacherous they are— between the Maldive Government and the Government of India is too horrible to contemplate; particularly after my hon. Friend has been so successful in bringing negotiations there to a successful conclusion, despite the football match which the Navy, contrary to instructions, won in Gan. As a result of the successful conclusion of the treaty with the people of the Maldive Islands,


perhaps my hon. Friend may be able to throw some light on their feelings, regarding this atoll and whether they have any claim on it themselves.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Gibson-Watt.]

Committee Tomorrow.

Orders of the Day — COMMONWEALTH TEACHERS BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

5.32 p.m.

The Minister of State for Commonwealth Relations (Mr. C. J. M. Alport): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The purpose of this Bill is to provide two principal forms of assistance in the sphere of education for Commonwealth countries and at the same time carry into effect the second of the undertakings given by the United Kingdom Government at the Commonwealth Education Conference last year at Oxford. The House will remember that earlier in this Session it gave approval to the Commonwealth Scholarships Bill—now an Act —representing the first of the major undertakings which we gave at the Oxford Conference. The Conference recognised that in the long term progress in education in any country in the Commonwealth must depend on its own resources and efforts. But we believe, and they believed, that in the short-term additional help as is provided by this Bill could be of great value in enabling those Commonwealth countries whose education systems are not fully developed to make significant strides forward in this important sphere.
In February of this year my right hon. Friend the Minister of Education held a conference on "Teachers for the Commonwealth" with the object of drawing attention of the authorities and organisations in the United Kingdom to the needs of overseas countries and to consider practical proposals for making it easier for teachers to take up key posts abroad. About 250 representatives of teachers' associations, local education authorities and other educational bodies, as well as Government Departments, were present at Church House on that occasion. I

know that my right hon. Friend was greatly encouraged by the response given at that conference to his appeal in which, incidentally, he was joined by other members of the Government and representatives of the Commonwealth High Commissioners in the United Kingdom.
At the conference my right hon. Friend put forward certain proposals, including the formation of a national council for the supply of teachers overseas, the preparation of a code of secondment for teachers going overseas to serve and a code of terms for the appointment of those teachers. It is hoped that in this way and in particular through the provisions in this Bill, we shall be able to provide teachers of the calibre and experience who, as is said in the White Paper, will be able to play a creative part in the educational development of those countries who need their services.
I should also remind the House, that the Prime Ministers of the Commonwealth, in the communiqué issued at the end of their conference, reaffirmed their belief in the value of exchanges between Commonwealth countries of persons with specialised skills and experience and agreed that further efforts should be made to encourage the exchanges. The communiqué continued that,
they trusted that employers in Commonwealth countries—whether Governments, statutory bodies or private companies—would be ready, wherever possible to encourage members of their staffs to undertake a period of public service abroad and would do their best to ensure that their prospects in their home countries would not thereby be prejudiced.
I should like to take this opportunity of renewing the appeal I made at the time of the debates on the Commonwealth Scholarships Act to employers, particularly in the world of education, and to the teachers themselves, to consider seriously the value and importance of service overseas both to them as individuals and to the countries of the Commonwealth in which they may serve. Whatever provision Governments here and overseas can make to provide the opportunities or the facilities for this form of service, the success of this scheme must depend —as, indeed, must our whole conception —primarily on the willingness of individuals to go abroad for two, three or more years to serve in the educational system of a Commonwealth country.
Despite the shortage of teachers in the United Kingdom, the numbers required are not, we believe, beyond our capacity to provide. They will rise from 75 in the first year to a total of about 135 in 1963, so that by 1965, at the end of the first five-year period, there will be about 400 teachers serving in schools and universities in the Commonwealth, additional to those proceeding overseas in the normal way. I must emphasise again that those teachers will, we hope, be of the calibre and possess the experience to enable them to fit into key posts in educational systems overseas so that they may make a particularly important contribution to the development of those systems in the years immediately ahead. We estimate that the cost of this section of the scheme will build up to about £700,000 a year by the end of the five-year period.
The other section of the scheme, as the House will know, deals with the provision of training facilities in the United Kingdom for teachers coming to this country from overseas. These will be called Commonwealth bursars, and we anticipate that in the first year of operation the full number of 400 or thereabouts will be coming to the United Kingdom to take up places at teacher training institutes here. The placing of these bursars will be carried out by a Commonwealth bursary unit representing the education departments, the Commonwealth Relations Office, the Colonial Office and the British Council, which will work in consultation with training institutions in this country. The period for which they will come for their training will be a year or perhaps in some cases two years or even longer. We expect that the cost of these bursaries will total annually to about £285,000.
I know that many of my hon. Friends and hon. Members opposite are interested in this side of the matter, and I can assure the House that careful arrangements have been worked out by the British Council for the reception and for looking after these people when they arrive in this country. The British Council will be responsible for their administration and welfare in the United Kingdom and full details of the arrangements in this respect are already provided in a handbook for bursars published this month by the British Council. This handbook

gives detailed instructions to bursars coming to the United Kingdom with regard to their reception here, their stay in London prior to their journey to their training college, their teaming at the college, with any additional facilities which may be required, their expenses, questions of clothing and clothing allowance, health and health service, amenities, and even details of their eventual return home.
As the House knows full well, the British Council has very considerable experience in this field, and I feel sure that the arrangements it is making will enable each bursar from the time of his arrival in the United Kingdom to the time of his departure to feel at home in our country.
Nevertheless, I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Education and all those who are associated with this scheme will greatly welcome any further assistance which can be given by voluntary organisations and individuals here in Great Britain in ensuring that bursars coming to the United Kingdom have a friendly welcome and a happy stay amongst us and, at the same time, are able during their vacations to see something of the family and home life of people in Britain. If that is possible, I am sure that they will take back not only great advantages from the point of view of their training, but the advantages of a pleasant and, we hope, enjoyable experience while among us.
I turn now to the provisions of the Bill. Clause 1 (1, a) is so drafted as to enable bursars coming from overseas to include those who are not actually British subjects or Commonwealth citizens. Certain Governments, for instance in countries like those in East Africa, may well wish to send over here for training teachers who are not British subjects or Commonwealth citizens but who, for the sake of argument, might be Portuguese citizens from being Goanese by birth. Therefore, in order not to prevent them being able to take advantage of these facilities, this subsection is drafted in this way.
Clause 1 (1, b) is so drafted as to eanble the United Kingdom to provide experts other than those who are members of the teaching profession but whose services in Commonwealth countries can be of great material advantage to their


education system as a whole. These would naturally include professional men and women whose expert assistance would be of help in special circumstances and on special subjects such as architecture, and technical instructors who would be available to give special instruction in skills in particular trades.
This subsection will also enable us to provide money facilities to enable teachers who are at present employed in Commonwealth countries, but not under this scheme, to have the advantage which will be extended to all teachers under the scheme, namely, to have their passages paid to the United Kingdom if at the end of their service in the Commonwealth country they are due for an interview on application for reabsorption into the education system here. We thought that this facility should be extended to existing teachers serving overseas, because we believe that thereby they will be given an indication of the practical benefits for them which the scheme by providing additional facilities includes.
Clause 1 (1, c) must, as the House will recognise, be read in conjunction with subsection (2). The Oxford Conference envisaged that co-operation in the field of education would extend beyond the provision of teachers. Therefore, by the Bill, and subject to Treasury approval, money can be provided for other forms of co-operation in the field of education—for instance, for the provision of advisers with regard to educational organisation or any matter related to education, but wider than the provision or training of teachers from overseas here in the United Kingdom.
Subsection (1, d) is not perhaps as important as it looks at first sight, but its intention is to enable the Secretaries of State to make repayment to the various agencies concerned with the administration of the scheme, such as the British Council, from funds which are at the disposal of the Secretaries of State in accordance with the Bill when enacted.
Subsection (3) sets the total of money to be expended under the Bill at £6 million, which is a figure already familiar to the House, being the total agreed by the United Kingdom and set out in the White Paper. We envisaged that the development in educational co-

operation for which the Bill provides will continue beyond the initial five years, that is between now and 1965.
Therefore, under subsection (4) Her Majesty may by Order in Council extend the period of the time during which the scheme operates and increase the sum, provided that the increase in the total of £6 million shall not take effect until the end of the first five years, which is the first day of April, 1965. Therefore, there is proper and appropriate control.
At the same time we are able to look forward to a period beyond 1965 when, in the light of the experience we shall have gained during the initial five years, the scheme, which we believe very sincerely will more than justify itself, can be carried into a new phase of continuous educational co-operation on a Commonwealth basis. We estimate that out of the total of £6 million about £2¼ million will be available and needed for the Scholarship and Fellowship scheme, and about £3¾ million for the schemes dealt with in the Bill.
The Bill, together with the Commonwealth Scholarships Act, provides a most significant and important addition to the effort already being made by the United Kingdom in the field of Commonwealth education. We estimate that at the present moment there are about 30,000 Commonwealth students of all categories in the United Kingdom. Of these, about 12,000 come from independent member countries and 18,000 from dependent territories. Of these, 7,000 are at universities, 4,000 from member countries and 3,000 from dependent territories. There are also about 7,000 at technical colleges and about 730 already at teacher training establishments, their number being substantially increased as the result of the Bill. We have already had, even up to the present time, demands for 300 to 400 places at teacher training establishments under the scheme, for the first year of its operation, and about 75 for university and school teachers to go overseas under the scheme when, as we hope sincerely, the Bill becomes an Act and we can implement its provisions
Therefore, we can only conclude that the need for what we are trying to do is there and that the demands we have already received represent a challenge, not only to the Government and all of


us here in Parliament, but also to individuals, the teaching profession, the universities, and others, to make the scheme a success. If the House passes the Bill, as I hope and believe that it will, I can assure it that those of us who are concerned with the Bill will leave nothing undone on our part to make the success of these twin schemes certain in the future.

5.50 p.m.

Mr. H. A. Marquand: This, as the Minister has reminded us, is the second Bill to come before the House as a result of the Commonwealth Education Conference. As I said in the debate on the previous Bill, I am very pleased that such rapid results have followed from that most valuable conference. I welcomed that Bill, now the Commonwealth Scholarships Act, very warmly and, if possible, I would welcome this one even more warmly.
The previous Bill dealt with postgraduate education. This Bill goes right to the roots of education. It deals with the foundations of education and it is important that we should consider the needs and desires of the under-developed countries of the Commonwealth and deal as rapidly as we possibly can with these foundations. People today, or most well-informed people in the more prosperous countries, are thoroughly convinced by now of the need for assisting their economic development. It is clearly understood that they cannot be expected to do it by themselves, in view of the great problems which they have to face, and that we must help them. I do not think that it is always quite so well understood how vitally important are good health and good education among the people of the under-developed countries if the economic plans which we try to support are to be successful.
Men debilitated by disease cannot work effectively. Men, women and children who are illiterate or poorly educated cannot use the techniques and the tools of the twentieth century. We live in the twentieth century and we are trying to apply to these under-developed areas of the world the techniques of the twentieth century. We must give them the opportunity to understand and use these techniques by first assisting the development of their education.
There is another reason for helping to improve their educational services and the education of their people. We cannot explain a plan. We cannot enlist the enthusiasm of a nation for a plan unless that nation is sufficiently educated to understand the outlines of the plan. These plans vary a great deal in their success according to the ability of the Governments concerned to put them over to the people. That is one of the reasons why the economic plan of India, the first five-year plan, has not been so successful as was originally hoped. That is not the only reason; but one of the difficulties was that of arousing enthusiasm in the villages and securing a convinced, corporate enthusiasm for the adoption of the ideals and practices of the plan. So the development of education is extremely important.
I noticed in rereading the debate on the previous Bill that the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. G. Lloyd) said that much economic aid might be wasted unless sufficiently trained and educated people were available to make the best use of it. He was quite right. I have mentioned the right hon. Gentleman, who was the former Minister of Education, and I should like to say how glad I am to see the present Minister of Education here. We look forward to hearing from him before the debate closes. He has an important part to play in the carrying out of this Bill when it becomes an Act, and I am sure that he will throw into it his characteristic enthusiasm for new ideas. We rely upon him to see that those parts of it for which he is responsible will be successful.
When one speaks of education in these under-developed countries one has to remember not merely the acute need for it but, fortunately, the acute desire for it on the part of the people concerned. My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) referred to it in the last debate. I will not take up time by quoting what he said, but it is worth looking at it again. He referred to his experience in Africa and what a problem a poor young half-trained student was faced with when trying to teach a large class of African children when he himself had only reached quite a lowly grade of achievement in education.
I have seen this myself in Kenya and other under-developed countries. The difficulties that there people have in undertaking this training is acute, and we shall be helping them by passing this Bill and putting it into practice later. They do it because the desire of their people is so passionate. The reason that they have these enormous classes crowded into inadequate huts and the like is that the people of Africa, like the people of under-developed territories everywhere, value education extremely highly and want to get all they can of it. The demand is there. The desire is there if only we can supply them at this moment with the vitally necessary technique of teaching.
This plan is based upon the recommendation of the Commonwealth Education Conference, which stated:
In the short term, help for other Commonwealth countries could be decisive, provided that it is carefully chosen and directed to the most sensitive and influential part of the recipient country's educational system.
The purpose of the Bill before us is not so much to provide more teachers, although it does that, but its main purpose is to provide opportunities for Africans, Indians, Pakistanis, whoever they may be from the Commonwealth, who are capable of benefiting from it and using it to come to this country to learn to be themselves trainers of teachers. Trainers of teachers are extremely scarce in those countries.
I feel, therefore, that if the Bill is passed and brought as rapidly as possible into action, it will have quicker and more widespread effect than one might first expect when one heard that 300 people had already been accepted or, at any rate, had applied for these jobs. If it is successfully put over in the right quarters so that they will go to training centres and get this advanced teacher training and so that, in turn, they can train teachers, we may have an opportunity of training fifty or a hundred times as many teachers as the numbers first brought here. We can then get something like a chain reaction in those countries which will be of the greatest possible value.
I suppose that a Parliamentary purist might object to or criticise the very wide powers set out in Clause 1 (1, c). I do not object a bit. I think that it is a good thing here and now. After all, there is

a global figure of expenditure which safeguards Parliamentary control the Executive here. It is a good thing to give considerable latitude to Ministers as to how they spend the money allotted to them within the confines of the Bill. Some experiment may be necessary. I was pleased to hear from the Minister of State that as many as 75 teachers of this country had already come forward and indicated their willingness to go out under the provisions of the Bill, if it is passed by Parliament.

Mr. Alport: I used two figures. One was 75, which was the number we hoped to send out in the first year. I do not know the exact number available. The other was 70, which was the demand we might be receiving from countries overseas for posts which are not necessarily all filled.

Mr. Marquand: I am sorry that I misunderstood and was too optimistic. Perhaps the feelers have not yet been put out to find how many are ready to go. Perhaps there is more reluctance than one would expect among teachers of this country to go abroad and undertake this sort of work. I was told of a recent experience of the London County Council when it notified its teachers of this opportunity and it provoked a rather disappointing response. If that is so, I hope that measures will be taken—I am sure that they will be by the Minister of Education—to give more publicity to the possibility of this service. Certainly, the Bill will enable him to offer more attractive financial provisions than have been offered in the past. That may help to elicit a response.
I hope so indeed, but the appeal should not be merely a financial one. It should not be merely the suggestion, "You certainly will not be worse off and, if necessary, you can be accompanied by members of your family", and that kind of thing. It should be an appeal to adventure, an appeal to service. There should be the practical statement, "If you undertake this sort of service in other countries you will widen your horizons enormously. You come back not only a better teacher than you went out, more competent and better able to take a better job than you had before you went out, but when you come back you have a great experience in


your storehouse, as it were, for after life —something to look back on, to reflect on with pleasure and pride that you have taken part in this great, constructive effort to help under-developed countries." I hope that it will be put in that sort of way.
I come now to the question of recruitment of teachers who go abroad and enter this new type of service. I refer particularly to university teachers. Paragraph 13 of the White Paper says that
Similar arrangements will be made to encourage teachers to take up key posts in universities and university colleges in the oversea Commonwealth.
but paragraph 10 previously states that:
The measures proposed for teachers who take up key posts in schools and in educational institutions other than universities will include the payment of special allowances.… In addition, fares to and from the United Kingdom may be paid for the teacher and members of his family …
Does that mean that whereas specially favourable provisions for allowances and travel for families are to be provided for teachers in primary and secondary schools, there is no intention of doing anything of the sort for university teachers? If that is so, why is it so? In what respect is the university teacher at any greater advantage in going abroad than the—I shall not say "ordinary", for that is a silly word to have chosen—than the school teacher? I should like an explanation about that.
This question of enabling a certain number of university teachers to go out from our country to the oversea Commonwealth is tremendously important. At present, there is no doubt whatever that the supply of teachers to overseas universities suffers very greatly because of a feeling in the minds of those who are asked to go not so much that they will make a possible financial sacrifice but, above all, that they will not be able to get back into academic life in this country. This is a matter on which I really am an expert, and can speak with complete authority. When I was a university teacher I came across many opportunities—one was offered to me and many were offered to my friends— to undertake teaching of this kind in the overseas Commonwealth.
More than once our seniors advised us not to take them "because", they said, "if you go out there you will be forgotten and will never get back. You will find yourself left in Australia, or wherever it may be, for the rest of your life. It is all right if you want that to happen, but, if you do not want it to happen, do not go". I have every reason to believe that that remains true today. It ought not to be true. Some means ought to be found for encouraging first-rate academic teachers to go to overseas universities for a time, or on a tour of duty, with all but a certainty that they can come back and take part later in the academic life of their own country if they so wish.
I have with me a letter, part of which, if the House will permit me, I shall read. It is from a university professor. I shall not say in which university he is, nor do I intend to give his name. He says:
I left a Readership in Mathematics in the University of X to go out to Y as Professor in 1952.
The University of X is, of course, in Britain—
I stayed there for seven years. From the moment I resigned my Readership I was written off, academically speaking, and although the University was glad to get somebody to go, any suggestion about my return was always met with 'But why can't you stay?' I did stay, for quite a long time!
When I left, and my Chair was advertised, nobody from Britain applied. In this University,
still an overseas university—
which has a fine reputation, we have recently advertised for a Professor of Applied Mathematics. Once again, there have been no applications from Britain, and only one application in all, from a Dutch school teacher who does not possess the necessary qualifications. My Chair in Y was filled by a Jugoslav. He could always return to his Chair in Belgrade. A lectureship there was filled by a Czech, the only applicant. He always has a post to go back to. Professor Z … wrote to me recently and said, ' I regret that I cannot persuade anyone to share the risks you so nobly take! ' The risks do not arise from being abroad, but from the practical impossibility of getting back to a post at a similar level to the one left on going abroad.
I assure hon. and right hon. Members opposite that this is a serious practical problem which should be tackled. So far as 1 can see, it could be tackled by means of the large blank cheque contained in the Bill, within the overall figure of £6 million.
I wish now to say something about the further measures in relation to the provision of places in training colleges here for those who will become teacher trainers later and the provision for students to come here. There are further measures envisaged. I welcome very strongly what is said in the White Paper about the need for expanding the numbers of Commonwealth students in technical colleges over the next decade and to expand training facilities for Commonwealth students in United Kingdom industry. I know that the Minister of Education is very keen on this subject. I am sure that he will do what he can to fulfil the ideal which is set out.
There is reference, also under the subject, "Further Measures of Educational Co-operation", to the teaching of English as a second language, which interested me very much. I had not heard of the specialism, or specialty, of teaching English as a second language, I must confess, until I went to India, Pakistan and Ceylon in 1952–53, where I met men on the staff of the British Council who possessed this particular expertise and were engaged in trying to hand over that expertise to Indian teachers.
I was very much impressed by what I saw and heard. I thought it tremendously important, because in each of those countries they had established one of their own languages as the national language so that every child in India, for example, should learn his mother tongue—Gujerati, Maharhastra, or whatever it may be—and then have to learn Hindi, the national language, and, finally, if he was to learn English which is rapidly becoming the international language, he had to learn a third language.
There was obviously in Chat situation the great danger that over the years the knowledge of English in India would decay until it almost disappeared and would be confined to a few people in the top levels of society and Government. It seemed to me extremely important that the new technique was being developed by the British Council. I remember talking to Lord Swinton about it when I came back and conveying to him the seriousness with which I thought the subject ought to be approached, and he

expressed agreement with what I said. That was in 1953, and now we are in 1960, and in the White Paper the teaching of English as a second language is referred to as "a relatively unexplored field". That seems most disappointingly slow progress, and I hope there is a strong intention rapidly to accelerate the progress.
We are told that a group of Commonwealth experts in the teaching of English as a second language is to meet at the beginning of 1961 to study problems in this "relatively unexplored field". Cannot we proceed a little faster than that? Is it so unexplored as all that? Are Commonwealth experts, for example, the only experts in this matter? I find that the Russians that I meet nowadays are able to speak English remarkably well, just as well as I do, it seems to me. When I was a member of the Council of Europe Assembly, at Strasbourg, I met Scandinavians and Dutchmen who could speak English fluently and without error and make speeches in English without reading them.
It seems to me that those are the people who are the experts in the teaching of English as a second language. They learn it as a second or third language and seem to learn it perfectly. I wonder whether we are being a little insular about this. I hope that I am wrong, but are we enlisting the aid of the Scandinavians and the Dutch, who are famous for their expert knowledge of English and their widespread ability to write and speak English? I am sure that their help would be forthcoming.
The Commonwealth Education Conference was an outstanding example of practical co-operation. The extent of the agreement reached and the speed with which results have followed the recommendations represented a remarkable achievement. I should like to know what consultation there has since been at home, how far the co-operation and consultation with experts which proceeded so satisfactorily at Oxford has been followed up at home. The success of the plan to bring teachers here for training and to persuade other teachers to help others and widen their horizon by going abroad will evidently depend upon the enthusiastic collaboration of the training colleges and university institutes of education.
Are they being brought into full consultation? I do not know that they are not, but I have been told that hitherto the arrangements have been made mostly by officials of the various Government Departments and that there is a sense among some specialists in education overseas that they have not been consulted as much as would have been desirable.
The Minister of State welcomed the help which might come from voluntary bodies. I am sure he will welcome the help which comes from the specialists in overseas education, the sort of people who are to be found in the Institute of Education in the University of London. Perhaps this help—it is not only in London by any means that the experts are to be found; they are to be found in Scotland and Ireland and elsewhere— could best be enlisted through the creation of a centre not only to help in working out these plans but also to gave experienced aid and advice to the very large number of overseas students who are now in this country without any official scholarship at all. Many of them are existing on their own means, such as they have been able to gather together, and many of them—I have met some of them, and I am sure that other hon. Members have—are a little at a loss and do not always go to very reputable institutions for their education, and they certainly need help.
The suggestion has been put to me, and I do not necessarily endorse it because I have not had full opportunity to discuss it, but I wonder whether the idea will be discussed of a centre of Commonwealth education which would organise conferences and assistance to visitors as well as make contact with individual students, giving advice to those who asked for it, and generally build up a sort of super-university of Commonwealth education? No doubt it would have to be based in London. Could a Commonwealth education centre of some kind be established, perhaps being supported to a modest extent from the £6 million which we are asked to provide under the Bill? It seems to me to be a good idea. If the Ministers desire more information about it, it will readily be provided by the newly-established Commonwealth Education Council.
I am tremendously interested in this whole project, as I hope I have convinced hon. Members. I wish it every success. I am sure that it will be pursued with enthusiasm by the Minister of Education, who will be primarily responsible for infusing into the schools and training colleges the energy which will be necessary to carry it out. I hope that it will be tremendously successful and that at the end of the five years the Government will be able to come to the House for more money, stating that the scheme has been a success and must be multiplied many times.

6.18 p.m.

Mr. Philip Goodhart: The right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Marquand) made an eloquent plea for helping university teachers who would go out from our colleges to universities in the Commonwealth. I certainly support his plea. At the end of 1958 I visited the university in Singapore, which has a very fine reputation. I was alarmed to hear last week, from a person well qualified to judge the situation, that that university, in a most important area, is having the very greatest difficulty in recruiting and retaining staff of sufficient calibre.
I believe that the first objective of the Bill can be accomplished relatively easily. So long as we are prepared to put up the money and provide the places in the teacher training colleges and other establishments, I have absolutely no doubt that there will be a continual flow of well-qualified teachers from the Commonwealth anxious to come here to receive part of their training. But I join the right hon. Gentleman in thinking that we should not underestimate the difficulty of persuading British teachers to serve part of their career in the Commonwealth, particularly those parts of the Commonwealth where they are most needed.
Some of these difficulties are of our own making. Every time teachers' salaries in this country go up—and they have gone up a great deal in recent years—it becomes a bit more difficult to persuade teachers that it is desirable to go out to a remote place in Africa. A few weeks ago I visited a secondary school in Uganda with a senior official from that territory's Ministry of Education. He


told me that British teachers were returning from this country and saying to their colleagues, "It really is true that they have never had it so good over there". That is, in this country. They say of their colleagues in the teaching profession here, "They never have had it so good".
This was having a substantial effect in lowering the morale of those teachers who were considering whether they should sign on for another tour of duty in Uganda. I think that we must bear in mind that every time we improve the condition of the teaching profession in this country, every time that salaries go up, so we have to raise the ante for persuading teachers in this country to go overseas.
I do not want to make out that those teachers who go at present are a grasping, materialistic lot. On the contrary, they are essentially, I believe, an idealistic group, a group of the very highest ideals, but they have material obligations, as we all do. They have families to maintain, and in teaching, as in all other professions and avocations, money does count.
Then, of course, there is another difficulty, one which can at the very best be laid only indirectly at our door, and that is the problem of local agitators.
In Nyasaland today there is only one secondary school for boys which provides pre-university courses. Every Nyasaland boy who wants to go on to higher education has to go through the fifth and sixth forms of that school. When I was there a few weeks ago I was told that there was the very gravest difficulty in retaining the British teaching staff, and, of course, this secondary school was entirely dependent on British teaching staff. I was told that it was exceedingly difficult either to retain staff or to recruit them, and so there was, and I expect that there still is, a distinct threat that the sixth form in that school will have to be closed. If that happens it will mean that higher education will be closed to all the young men in Nyasaland. If that were to happen I should consider that it would be a disaster of major proportions for that country.
Why is it difficult to fill these positions? The money is there, waiting to be paid out to those anxious to fill the

jobs. Undoubtedly, the difficulty there is political. The teacher thinks, "Why should I go to Nyasaland? There is a possibility that my wife and children will be insulted, stoned, injured in a riot. There are pleasanter places where it is possible to carry on my job." It is possible to carry on this difficult but rewarding job in pleasanter and more salubrious circumstances. After all, if I were a teacher thinking of going out to Kenya, where the need for teachers in the secondary education system is as intense as it is anywhere else in the world, I am convinced that I should be most put off by all the perverted whinings and yappings which go on for the release of Jomo Kenyatta.
Professor Arthur Lewis, in a justly famous analysis, has said that no emergent State can aspire to a tolerable standard of efficiency unless 4 per cent. of each generation has a genuine secondary education. No territory in East or Central Africa comes close to that minimum, although much-maligned Southern Rhodesia may well soon be approaching it.
At the same time, at least 50 per cent. of all the graduate teachers in the secondary schools in every academic system in East and Central Africa are expatriates from Britain. If there is to be, as there must be, an expansion in genuine secondary education, then the number of expatriate teachers must increase. If we look for a reasonable but still unspectacular increase in secondary education, and if all the schemes for increasing the number of African graduates from universities are successful, I cannot Chink of a single East or Central African Territory where the educational system will be really independent of expatriate teachers within the next twenty-five years.
The size of this problem is vast, but it is also manageable. Recently, I sat in the office of the Director of Education in Tanganyika and I looked at the graphs which had been prepared. At the bottom there was a large black blob. That represented the very substantial number of African children who were receiving primary education, and I saw how this blob was narrowing—tragically narrowing—to a thin streak which represented the number of African boys and girls in


higher secondary education. The Director of Education told me, "If only we could have 25 or 30 of the right British teachers the situation could be transformed, and be transformed quickly." It seems to me that the proposal to provide for an additional 400 teachers overseas, although it may not look very spectacular, will, if it is achieved in the near future, provide in real terms a spectacular advance.
The Minister of State, in opening the debate, referred to several suggestions which had been made at the recent conference on African education over which the Minister of Education presided. I believe that there is ample room for action above and beyond the financial provisions in the Bill. We must encourage young, enthusiastic, ambitious teachers to go and tackle the challenge of the Commonwealth. They will not want to make their whole career overseas. It is right that they should not, because, obviously, the senior administrative posts and the headmasterships will increasingly be filled—many are now— by local men and women. Our own teachers will go overseas for a short time and then look to this country for promotion.
When I sat on a head teachers' selection sub-committee, I considered it a mark in favour of the candidate that he or she had taught for a time overseas, but I am not sure that all my colleagues took quite such an enlightened view. It would be helpful if the Minister of Education, continually by speech and circular, made it plain that, when promotion is in sight, service overseas should be a mark of merit and not a sign of noble eccentricity.
There is also the fact to which the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East referred, that many teachers who go overseas feel isolated from the main stream of British education. They fear that when they return they will find themselves looked upon as outsiders unconnected with the local authorities' systems in any particular area here. What a wonderful thing it would be if local education authorities could adopt special areas in the Commonwealth, if, for instance, the mighty London County Council would accept a special responsibility for helping the secondary schools of Uganda to find qualified teachers, or

if the County of Kent would help the Coast Province of Kenya to find the qualified secondary teachers who are so badly needed there. Co-operation between nations within the Commonwealth is an excellent thing. It would be equally excellent if this could be supplemented by local co-operation.
The Bill is as important as the Merchant Shipping (Minicoy Lighthouse) Bill which we have just discussed was unimportant, but I hope that we shall give it an equally enthusiastic reception when it is put before us for acceptance later this evening.

6.34 p.m.

Mrs. Eirene White: Like hon. Members on both sides of the House, I warmly welcome the Bill and I hope that it will have all the results envisaged in the White Paper and discussed at the Commonwealth Conference.
The Minister of Education referred to this matter when speaking recently in London. I am glad to find that he is using the occasions of his public appearances in the country to draw attention to the very great need for teachers to go overseas and for us to be willing to take teachers from the Commonwealth into our own training colleges and institutes of education. In passing, I must say that I was rather disturbed to find that he used these proposals as one excuse for not wishing to commit himself to implement the proposals of the Crowther Report. I think it right to draw attention to that.
The number of teachers mentioned in the White Paper, the expected total of 400 going overseas by 1965, is, after all, of very small magnitude compared with the total number of teachers needed in this country to implement any of the proposals in the Crowther Report, and I do not think it was a very statesmanlike attitude on the part of the right hon. Gentleman to make that comparison. I hope that he will not repeat it when discussing the matter again.
Apart from that, which I take to be an error of judgment on his part, we are glad to know that Her Majesty's Ministers are really trying to do something definite and positive in the interchange of teachers. The need is really beyond the knowledge and almost beyond the imagination of many people


in this country. If the facts of the need for teachers in some of the countries with which we are concerned were really known, there would be far less hesitation about volunteering.
The experience of the London County Council and, I believe, of the Kent education authority and others who have tried to be co-operative in this matter has been rather daunting. I believe that after the last appeal made by the London County Council not one person volunteered, or, at any rate, no one firmly volunteered, although there may have been one or two inquiries. It is right, therefore, to draw the attention of the House and, I hope, of members of the teaching profession, through this debate, to the really desperate need for teachers in certain parts of the Commonwealth.
I am particularly concerned about East and Central Africa, countries which are feeling their way towards political independence, countries in which any idea of democratic government cannot be realised unless there is some basis of education among the peoples concerned. When I looked at the facts, although I knew them in general terms, I was horrified by the details of the education problem in those countries. I will give one or two examples.
In this country, all children who attend a primary school receive some form of secondary education and some of them have the opportunity to go to grammar school. The figures vary from one education authority to another, but in the very worst areas of England, with the lowest proportion of all, one child in ten can receive a grammar school education. In most parts of England, one child in three or four can go to grammar school. Needless to say, in Wales the proportion is better still, and in most parts of the Principality one child in every two or three can go to grammar school.
In Nyasaland, according to the latest statistics I have been able to obtain, one child in 270 managing to attend primary school—not all, of course, go even to primary school—has an opportunity of going to secondary school. That is shocking. For some of the other countries the figures I have are approximate, but I believe them to be reasonably accurate. In Kenya, for instance, there is one place in a secondary school for every 150 African children going to

primary school. In Northern Rhodesia, the position is a little better, roughly one place for every 120 children. The figures in respect of some of the other territories are not quite so easy to find, but the comparisons I have given provide a very telling illustration of the urgent need to increase the number of secondary school teachers in order to allow children who have just the first taste of education to go on, to have something really substantial and a proper basis for a career in life.
The number of children who go to primary schools at all is relatively small. In Northern Rhodesia, it is about 60 per cent. of the children; in Uganda between 40 and 50 per cent.; and in Tanganyika in 1954 only 14 per cent. of children of school age were able to go. It is true that there has been an improvement and that the figure is now over 30 per cent. Even in West Africa, where conditions are so much better, in Western Nigeria the figure is 70 per cent., and in Eastern Nigeria 80 per cent.
We find even more startling figures if we look at the number of teachers in the schools in these territories and their qualifications. I asked for details of the number of teachers in certain territories, those who were graduates, those who were not graduates but had completed a secondary school course, and figures of those who had not even completed a secondary school course, but were nevertheless teachers. I will give these figures.
In Kenya, out of the total number of teachers of all races of just over 19,000, no fewer than 15,880 had not completed secondary schooling. That is the number of teachers who are teaching there but who have not themselves even completed secondary schooling. In Nyasaland, of about 7,000 African teachers, 6,500 had not completed secondary schooling. In Northern Rhodesia, of 5,250 African teachers, 4,845 had not completed secondary schooling, and in Uganda, similarly, out of 17,400 teachers, 15,500 had not completed secondary schooling.
So we see the fantastic handicap of people in these countries who are trying to obtain some sort of education. If we look at those trying to go on to universities to graduate and then return perhaps to teach in their own countries, we find that the figures for Kenya are


not so bad, that those for Uganda are moderately good, and that in Tanganyika at least they are an improvement on what they were. But in this country of roughly 8½ million people, there are only 250 students at the moment at Makerere and at the Royal Technical College, Nairobi, and about 50 overseas.
In Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia, it is more difficult to get the figures, because higher education is a Federal matter, and the Federal Government in their report on education, do not give figures for university students. This is a matter of information which might be drawn to the attention of the Commonwealth Relations Office, because it is information for which we are entitled to ask, and we cannot obtain it readily from published material. In 1958, there were 16 students in Nyasaland and 33 in Northern Rhodesia, receiving public grants. Nyasaland has 2 million people and Northern Rhodesia 2½ million. I have given these figures because it is only when one has concrete illustrations of this kind that one realises what a tremendous problem education is in these countries and how absolutely desperate is the need for teachers.
In speaking today, I have in mind two people, one of whom has written to me and the other whom I saw only yesterday, and who spoke to me on the even more difficult matter of education of girls and women. If it is difficult for a boy to get secondary or higher education in these countries, it is infinitely more difficult for a girl. In East and Central Africa, I am told, compared with boys, about one girl in eight has any hope of getting any sort of secondary education. The girl I saw was from Kenya, and was an extremely talented person who had wanted secondary education. In fact, she had wanted university education, but had managed to get the intermediate schooling and had been able to qualify as a nurse. She was obviously the sort of person who ought to have gone on to Makerere.
This girl said that she came from Nyanza and that for nearly 1 million people there was only one secondary school for girls. She said, "If you do not get into that, you have no hope at all." She was here with her husband, who is a graduate of St. Andrews and is

doing research work there, and she told me, "I am trying to find some way or another in which we can start another girls' school in that province." She made me feel ashamed that there was so little prospect for intelligent girls like herself even now to obtain the education for which they were so obviously fitted by character and ability.
From a close relative of mine who wrote to me the other day, a teacher in Tanganyika in one of the very few girls' schools there, I learn that they are almost in despair because four of their teachers have left. They have no domestic science teacher, and no science teacher, having had to allow their one science teacher to go to the one school which prepares students for the university in Tanganyika. She said that if only teachers in Britain would realise what a satisfying and exciting life they could have there, and the wide responsibilities which they have for the girls they teach, surely more would go. I feel that very strongly myself, and I think that we ought to make a greater appeal, especially to the younger teachers, to go out to these countries and to enjoy the life out there, because it can be very interesting.
I was speaking at Oxford this weekend to some of those concerned with the training of teachers, and they told me that they are very much encouraging teachers to go overseas immediately after training. In some ways, it would be better if they had a little experience in this country before going out there, but they told me that there is much to be said for someone who has taken a degree and gone for training to the Institute of Education going straight away overseas and getting their experience there. The differences in conditions are considerable, and, on the whole, there is much to be said for learning on the job. I very much hope that we shall be able to send to some of these schools and university training colleges one or two people like the woman from Kenya to whom I spoke yesterday, who could talk directly to some of the students and tell them something of the kind of life which would be open to them.
I know that those concerned with trying to recruit teachers feel that much too little information is given about the more professional aspects of their job. They are told about the climate, what clothes


to take and how to avoid malaria, and so on, but there is far too little professional contact, explaining to intending teachers overseas just what the job involves in terms of teaching technique, teaching content and methods and that kind of thing. They feel that there should be much better liaison, and that it is all done far too much at the administrative level and that there is far too little of professional interchange. They feel that the appeal should be from teacher to teacher and not merely from administrator to teacher because, they say, that the administrators do not make the appeal in terms which can be understood.
I should like to make one or two points about teachers coming to this country for training. It is true that there is not likely to be a lack of candidates coming to this country, but I am told that there are some quite acute problems in certain university centres about accommodation for teachers who wish to come here. The Minister is probably aware that at Oxford there is an acute problem of accommodation. The authorities there are very much concerned about how they are to house teachers under this scheme who wish to go to Oxford for training. I hope very much that the scheme, which is a good one in itself, will not be spoilt by any cheeseparing or niggardliness in making proper provision for people who want to go to a university or training college, provided they are prepared to accept them. I hope that they will not be prevented from doing so because of shortage of accommodation.
I also hope very much that we shall have an organisation, on the lines suggested by my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Marquand), for teachers who have gone overseas, which will enable them to keep in touch, to which they can turn and which will keep a sort of personal record of these people with the qualities and character needed for this job. Educationists have told me about people who go overseas on a short contract. For example, people went to Malaya on community development work when they were particularly asked to go. Some of them did a very good job and then seemed to vanish in thin air because no one bothered very much about what happened to them after the contract work had come to an end. Unless there is an

organisation in this country on the lines suggested by my right hon. Friend there will be a similar wastage under this scheme. For this reason, and because of the need for people who are teachers and not administrators to get together and to keep in touch with one another, it is very necessary that we should have an organisation of this kind here.
I am not clear what the functions of the National Council for the Supply of Teachers Overseas are to be. I am not sure whether that is a body which could act as a Commonwealth Institute of Education or could be extended so to act. I should be interested to hear from the Minister about what it is intended this Council should do and whether there would be any physical habitat. People who are part of a Commonwealth teaching or education service should recognise that it is a service worth belonging to and we should not simply think in terms of a certain number of people going overseas for two or three years and just coming back.
We have suffered in the past from the superannuation arrangement which allowed for five years overseas when everyone knew that the normal tour was three years. One was not covered for two tours of three years by the shortsightedness of the superannuation arrangements. Most people will agree that people are very much more useful on their second tour than on their first tour, yet the administrative arrangements were such that it was not easy for a person to complete a full second tour. I hope that we shall not get into that sort of tangle in this scheme. I am sure that it is not intended that there should be difficulties of that sort, but I hope very much that the people doing the job will have their voice heard and that the matter will not be dealt with simply on an administrative level.
I am sure that all of us in the House want to encourage anyone who we know has the right qualities and is free to do so to take this scheme seriously and to volunteer to go overseas. It was very disheartening to see a cri de coeur in the Daily Mail on Monday. The head of the Ismaili Community Education Office in Tanganyika was camplaining of the difficulty of obtaining teachers from this country, and he said:
The spirit of adventurous crusading seems dead in England at the present time".


I hope very much that that is not true and that the publicity given to this service by this debate will bring a warm, generous and speedy response from the students and teachers in this country.

6.56 p.m.

Mr. John Howard: I have a particular reason for commending this valuable piece of Commonwealth co-operation to the House. Last autumn, I was fortunate enough to be one of the United Kingdom delegation to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Conference, in Canberra. At that conference I took part in a debate on technical and educational development and co-operation in the Commonwealth. Various aspects of Commonwealth relations were discussed, but there was a special appeal for the new and developing nations in education.
As has been said, a good deal has been done in this country in this sphere, and the Minister of State referred to the number of Commonwealth students undergoing training in this country. My hon. Friend, however, did not refer to one particularly interesting experiment, namely, the arrangement with the Government of Malaya, whereby they pay for two training establishments, one at Liverpool and the other at Wolverhamp-ton, at each of which 300 students are trained by teachers in this country. That is a particularly useful illustration of the way in which the scheme can be extended.
The debate in Canberra showed clearly that the work of the Commonwealth Education Conference at Oxford was of great interest to all nations in the Commonwealth. It certainly captured the interest of those new nations which regarded the proposals as a means whereby their political and economic progress could be considerably accelerated.
The first of the two major schemes dealt with in the White Paper and by the Bill concerns the training of Commonwealth teachers in the United Kingdom. Paragraph 8, on page 5 of the White Paper, refers to arrangements whereby members of the staffs of teacher training institutions in the United Kingdom at which Commonwealth teachers study can visit parts of the Commonwealth in order to see something of the

environment in which these teachers will work on the completion of their training. That is an important provision, because it gives an idea of the sphere in which the finished products of our training colleges will have to work and the local material on which they will work.
Throughout the debate at Canberra, speakers, particularly those from the Continent of Africa, stressed the need for the provision of more teachers from the United Kingdom. The hon. Lady the Member for Flint, East (Mrs. White) gave many examples of where teachers clearly are urgently needed. It is equally true to say that it is more valuable that teaching should be conducted on the spot rather than that a number of individuals should be sent to Britain from Commonwealth countries. There are several disadvantages in this. First, there is the cost of travelling and maintenance in this country, and, secondly, there is the strange environment into which they are plunged. Those conditions must inevitably limit the number of students from the Commonwealth who can travel to this country to be trained as teachers.
Her Majesty's Government agreed at the Oxford conference that they would endeavour to increase the number of teachers who would be prepared to take a post overseas. This Bill provides the means. Not only must the financial conditions be right, but the teachers who are prepared to undertake this valuable work must not be handicapped by loss of promotion prospects when they return home. Promotion and superannuation are safeguarded by the Bill, and again I am glad to see that there is provision for travelling expenses from whatever overseas area the teachers are working in during the last few months of their tour of duty so that they can come home and attend interviews when they are on the short list for jobs in this country. This will encourage people to feel that when they are overseas they will not be overlooked and that they will be invited to take posts in this country when their contract comes to an end.
While it is impossible to write into the Bill instructions to local education authorities and other employers of teachers and university graduates to reengage those who have served overseas, I was glad to hear the hon. Lady the Member for Flint, East and my hon.


Friend the Member for Beckenham (Mr. Goodhart) refer to this problem. I should have thought that the broader outlook and knowledge of the Commonwealth obtained during a tour of duty overseas would have enhanced a teacher's prospects of accelerated promotion on return to the United Kingdom. Apparently, that has not been the case so far, and the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Marquand) read out a rather disturbing letter in which the difficulties faced by a university graduate who had accepted a post abroad were enumerated.
Mention has been made of the discouraging experience of London County Council when it has tried to recruit teachers for service overseas. In my own town of Southampton there is an exchange arrangement with the United States. Teachers come over here and we send teachers to the United States. It would be nice to think that Southampton, or any other county borough, could adopt an area in the Commonwealth to which teachers would be encouraged to go on a three-year contract.
We have talked about the lack of adventure, which the relative of the hon. Lady the Member for Flint, East claimed exists. I do not believe that we are less adventurous in this country than we used to be. The emphasis in the problem which we are facing must inevitably be on male teachers. Judging by the figures which the hon. Lady gave, more male teachers will be required.

Mrs. White: It is true that the present provision for girls is lamentably inadequate, but we hope that it will improve rapidly and that there will be a considerable demand for women teachers.

Mr. Howard: I share the hon. Lady's wish, but I am referring only to the present situation.
We have now ended National Service and it may well be that more men teachers will feel that they are able to devote two or three years to service in the Commonwealth which in the conditions prevailing during the past few years they were not prepared to do. They served their two years in the Armed Forces and then perhaps wished to settle down, or wished to make permanent strides in their profession and were reluctant to take posts overseas.
This problem of re-employment is one of the most important when we are dealing with teaching overseas. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Education, in replying to the debate, will tell the House the forms of persuasion which he hopes to adopt so that employers of teachers, the local education authorities and the universities, will treat this problem seriously and take every step to engage teachers who have had experience in the Commonwealth.
The pooling of resources and mutual assistance, which the Bill emphasises, is the breath of life to the Commonwealth. Whilst I was at the conference in Canberra the word one heard most frequently in relation to the Commonwealth was "family". In no sphere is the family spirit of the Commonwealth more evident than in co-operation in the education of the children and young people of all the Commonwealth nations. I am convinced that the Bill means a further step forward in improving Commonwealth co-operation.

7.6 p.m.

Mr. John Dugdale: I should like to say how much I agree with both hon. Members opposite who have suggested that there should be schemes of adoption and that certain local authorities or areas in this country should adopt areas in the less well-developed parts of the Commonwealth. It is an excellent idea, which. I hope, will be carried out.
I completely disagree, however, with the hon. Member for Beckenham (Mr. Goodhart), who talked about the terrors of riots which were threatening people going abroad. He gave us to understand that they would have more effect on present-day teachers than did the terrors which faced missionary teachers who went out into the jungle and met lions and tigers and other dangers but still continued to do their work. Apparently, teachers today have not that courage. I think that the hon. Member is wrong and I believe that the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Mr. J. Howard) is inclined to agree with me on that point.
I agree profoundly with my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Marquand) in saying how much education is desired by people in the


underdeveloped countries. I remember so well asking people, particularly in Africa, what they wanted most. In this country, they would probably say that they wanted a house more than anything else. Certainly, they would say that in my constituency, but in Africa they wanted, before anything else, a school. Their desire for education is manifest.
I want to confine my remarks to one particular set of teachers. I shall not refer to teachers of science, or of history, or of law. I want to refer to those teachers who teach children to be able to speak. People go out today and try hard to teach children, who are completely unable to speak or to hear, to be able to have some communication with the rest of the world. In this country, there are approximately 7,000 deaf and dumb children and they have 700 teachers, that is, one teacher to every ten children. Many people think that that number is not enough, because one must have very small classes for such children.
But let us compare the position in the Commonwealth. If one took the same basis of population and obtained figures comparable with those which apply in this country, there would be in Ghana 700 deaf and dumb children. According to the information which I have obtained from the National Deaf Children's Society—which says that its figures may not be strictly accurate, but are the best that can be obtained; and I think that they are better than those that are obtained in the Minister's Department—there is only one fully trained teacher to deal with these 700 children. In Uganda, on the same basis, there are 800 children and, again, one African teacher. There may be a European, but certainly there is only one trained African. In Nigeria, the situation is even worse. In Nigeria, on available figures, there should be approximately 5,000 deaf and dumb children. There is one qualified African teacher in the country.
In Tanganyika, which is the responsibility of the Colonial Secretary—I am sure that if he were here he would agree that the situation there is very serious —there are approximately 1,000 deaf and dumb children, and yet there is not one trained teacher for them. In Malaya, the situation is better. There is a school

—founded by Lady Templer—which has six teachers. That seems a lot compared with the other countries I have mentioned, but in spite of it there are 600 children on the waiting list who are unable to obtain any instruction at all and who will, therefore, remain deaf and dumb for the rest of their lives. In the West Indies, it is the same story. I understand that in India only one deaf and dumb child in ten gets any kind of education. India has quite a lot of schools, but so vast is her population that the figure is only one in ten.
The general situation is, therefore, one of the most serious facing our schools in the Commonwealth, and I hope that it will receive full attention. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us that teachers of the deaf and dumb will at least be allowed to apply along with others for these teacher-training scholarships. I hope that Commonwealth countries will send them. There is need to persuade them to include these teachers among the applicants for bursarships in this country. I hope, too, that the Colonial Secretary will tell Colonial Governments that they should send applicants under this scheme.
The Colonial Office is about to undertake in Africa an important survey of the problems of deafness throughout a great many countries in the continent, with the help of one of the big foundations, and at the suggestion of the Commonwealth Society for the Deaf. That is a very useful survey and it will no doubt reveal what ought to be done, but we can be certain even before it takes place that there is a definite demand for teachers and I hope that we will not have to wait until after the survey before doing everything possible to get teachers trained in this country.
I hope, too, that it will be possible for the Secretary of State, under this scheme, to tell us that teachers from this country will be sent to train deaf and dumb people in the various parts of the Commonwealth. Some are already going out to do that, but not nearly enough. Let us hope that this scheme will do something to encourage the sending of such teachers abroad. Finally, I hope that the Commission that is to be set up will select among its applicants at least some teachers of the deaf and dumb and not only scientists.


Scientists are important but there is a tendency to say that only teachers of science should be selected. I hope that teachers of the deaf and dumb will also be selected.
I said that I would speak on only one particular problem and I have done so. Thousands of these children—and this applies to this country also, but even more to those parts of the Commonwealth which are so ill-equipped—have no contact whatever with the outside world. They are locked inside their own prison of silence. This Bill provides a key by which some of them may be released from this prison, and I hope that those responsible will use it.

7.15 p.m.

Miss Joan Vickers: I am pleased to be able to follow the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bromwich (Mr. Dugdale), because I know something of the work which he has done and is doing for the deaf children and how very sincere he is in this work. I wish him every success and I hope that this Bill will help. The hon. Lady the Member for Flint, East (Mrs. White) gave some very vital and interesting figures which also proved how important is the Bill.
I agree with what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Marquand) said about the question of English. The first time I had the pleasure of meeting him was in India, when he was on the tour which he mentioned. There are numbers of people, other than English, who are quite capable of teaching English extremely well. In a great many educational establishments overseas I have met all sorts of people who are able to do so. I suggest that we could use, in this way, more persons who are Stateless. There were two people in Tanganyika who were Stateless persons and were doing excellently. These people might fill a gap if we could engage them to teach the language.
I am interested in this Bill for several reasons, for I have given some service overseas. I can assure the hon. Lady the Member for Flint, East that people who went out on short-term commissions were usually picked up again—I am thinking particularly of Malaya—by the

Colonial Office, and, for example, many gave further service, particularly in West Africa.
I agree that the recruitment of teachers does not seem satisfactory, and I wonder what are their exact terms of reference. Has the actual amount which they are to be paid been settled? Have the recommendations on pages 46 and 47 of the Report of the Commonwealth Education Conference been agreed? There is, particularly, one recommendation, on page 47, concerning the recognition of service abroad and the increments for salaries. It said:
It became evident that there is considerable variation in the recognition given by different countries for service abroad. Some countries give only partial credit: e.g. two increments for three years' service. The Committee sees little justification for giving less than full credit for relevant service.
I hope that my right hon. Friend can tell us whether this has been settled and whether all territories will give full increments for relevant service. This could have a great effect on recruiting for overseas. Through this new two-way service we shall get more than educational advantage. We can get—and I believe that this is the only means now of getting —a better understanding between the countries of the Commonwealth, because the civil services are gradually becoming staffed by the peoples of the countries they serve, not from overseas. This scheme, which we envisage going on for some considerable time, may be the best means that we have of getting to understand one another better.
Are we quite certain that we have sufficient vacancies in teacher-training colleges? We have been told in past education debates that there is rather a shortage for our teachers. I would be grateful if we could be assured that there will be enough vacancies without crowding out the teachers we need for our own people. I support what my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Mr. J. Howard) said about teacher-training staff going overseas—and this is mentioned on page 8 of the Report—to find out for themselves the conditions in which people are living before they receive teachers in this country.
I know from my experience in Malaya that a number of people arrived there with no knowledge of the type of work they have to do. That happened soon


after the war and there may have been difficulties about recruitment, but some of the people who arrived there broke down and had to go back to England because they had not the knowledge or the background to enable them to do the work which was expected of them. It is also important that those who are to teach in training colleges should go overseas to find out what life is like in, say, Uganda or Malaya, before they are brought here, because I think that we might get the wrong type to profit from the teaching in this country.
That brings me to another point. I hope that my right hon. Friend will ensure that some of these courses are adapted to suit people from overseas, because courses that suit teachers in this country do not necessarily help those coming from overseas. I remember the frustration experienced by the students that were sent to Malaya. Having attended social service courses, they wished to give the services in the manner in which they had been taught in England, but they found that they did not fit into the country in which they were going to work.
For that reason, I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Test that the Malayan training courses have been a great success, although I do not necessarily want to bring people from various countries and put them in a teachers' training college which is entirely for people of their own country. It is better for them to mix with other people, but one can learn a lot from this type of training college because the curriculum has been adapted to suit the country in which the people will eventually teach.
I will now deal with three aspects of the kind of people who will come from other territories and the kind of training which we hope they will receive. First, informal education. Will the people coming to this country, and those going overseas from this country, for training, be allowed to teach in other than Government schools? Will they be allowed to teach in mission schools, or in schools run by voluntary organisations? One must realise that we are not going to supply a large number of teachers. It is proposed to supply 400 by 1965, and I hope that a proportion of those teachers will be used for what I call informal

education, because, while there is a shortage of teachers, it is better that they should be able to teach a larger number of people by informal education—such as is done by the Workers' Educational Association and adult informal education—than to stick to one class in a school or college.
In most overseas territories the need is for the greatest number of people to be educated. I should like to hear from my right hon. Friend whether he thinks that this scheme will bring a selected number of people up to a higher standard of education, or whether the net will be spread as widely as possible to educate as many people as possible. If it is the latter, it will mean using this system of informal education. I should like to see a large percentage of these teachers used to spread the net as widely as possible.
I hope that we shall include teachers of domestic science and agriculture, because knowledge of those two subjects is particularly necessary in most of the territories concerned. Furthermore, there is the question of community centres. Shall we be able to run evening classes in these community centres? Will we train the extra-mural type of teacher who can go to these community centres and hold classes there? I want the greatest possible number of people to be educated, and very often women can afford to attend informal classes only in the evening.
I support what the right hon. Member for West Bromwich said about handicapped persons. I notice that Command Paper 841 says that because of pressure of time the Oxford Conference was unable to discuss this important subject. I am interested in handicapped persons, particularly the blind. Blind people can be very useful if trained, but if they are not trained they cannot do normal work and must depend on begging for a living. It is possible to make blind people into useful citizens, but I realise that because of the shortage of teachers it may not be possible to have specialised teaching as we have in this country.
The Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind, in which I am interested, is starting an integration scheme in Nigeria. The teachers we hope to train may be able to help. The idea is that


a blind child will go to a sighted school —and this has already worked quite well in the United States of America—and be taught in the same way as sighted children, provided that the teacher has some knowledge of the way in which to teach blind children.
I hope that when some of these teachers come over here they will be allowed to spend some time studying the system for teaching the blind so that this integration scheme can be started in other countries. The scheme is only just being started in Nigeria, but because of the shortage of teachers I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to it well beforehand. It is, of course, necessary to have in the area a person in overall charge who has been fully trained in teaching the blind. He must keep an eye on what is happening and visit the various schools and supervise the teachers. This scheme has been tried with great success in one school in Zanzibar.
In the Princess Elizabeth Home for the Blind in Malaya all the teachers were trained in this country. They are now in the position of being able to train others, and this might be a possible training centre for the Commonwealth countries in the Far East, for Indonesia, and other countries if they so wish. If we can build up the number of trained teachers they can help not only other countries in the area, but the integration scheme to which I referred.
The right hon. Gentleman gave some figures about the deaf, and I should like to give some figures about the blind. There are at least 55,000 blind children in the Colonial Territories, of whom only 1,300 are at present at school. In India alone there are 100,000 to 150,000 blind children, but only 3,000 are in schools.
The other question I wish to raise is that of teachers being given the tools of their profession. From the correspondence that I have had it appears that teachers go to these other countries with inadequate tools; in other words, there are not sufficient books or materials to enable them to carry on their work.
The right hon. Gentleman mentioned that there was one qualified teacher for Nigeria. I know that one teacher has just gone back, having spent a year at the University of Manchester. I met her the other day and found that she was going back with no equipment to carry

out what she has learnt here, and I gather that she will not get it until the Estimates for 1961–62 are approved. If we are to bring people to this country and train them for a specific teaching job, I hope that we will see that they have the necessary tools with which to carry out their work when they return.
The hon. Member for Flint, East mentioned the question of training for people leaving here for overseas. I would like to see more encouragement given to the Corona Club courses and the courses run by Mr. Holland, which are mainly for men. It is important for people to have some knowledge of the country to which they are going before they leave.
Cmd. 841 states that a small Information Service should be set up. It is extremely important to have an Information Service here which can help to co-ordinate the needs of people leaving here and also those coming here. If this Information Service has not already been set up, I suggest that we might consider using the Royal Commonwealth Society headquarters, in Northumberland Avenue. They are known to many students, and they have an excellent reference library. They hight easily be able to provide a centre for this service.
I also hope that we shall see a greater interchange between the teachers of various Commonwealth countries. I know that the Bill provide for exchanges between this country and others, but I hope that we will encourage, for instance, Indians to go to Africa, and Africans to go to India, so that the people in Commonwealth countries can obtain a better knowledge of each other.
This has been an interesting debate, and I am grateful for the opportunity of having been able to take part in it. I wish the scheme well, and hope that we shall be successful in recruiting the necessary number of teachers to go overseas in the not too distant future.

7.33 p.m.

Dr. Alan Thompson: I strongly support the Bill and the educational objectives embodied in it. I know that when we talk about educational objectives we run a grave risk of repeating platitudes. I can think of few subjects which lend themelves to so many platitudes as the subject of


education, and I realise that I may fall into that trap.
The educational liaison proposed by the Bill is an excellent objective. Our relations with countries abroad are too often channelled exclusively through political and governmental agencies, and we do not manage effectively to present to the people of other countries the diversified character of British society and culture. This is true of our diplomatic relations, as I said in an Adjournment debate on the Foreign Office, but it is also true of our relations with Commonwealth countries.
In Britain we have a pluralistic society—plural in its free institutions and the freedom of individuals to travel as they wish without representing or being bound by Government policy. The great advantage of our society over a totalitarian society lies in the fact that we can reflect the interests of free individuals. But we do not make use of this facility in our contacts with other countries. These unofficial contacts are of the utmost value. Speaking as somebody who has studied abroad for a short time, I believe that the Britisher who goes abroad should not consider himself to be too consciously an unpaid ambassador, representing his Government unofficially, in a rather laborious way. I found that the most popular Britons abroad were those who were just themselves—who reflected their own cultural attitudes and backgrounds spontaneously without considering themselves unpaid plenipotentiaries. Those who did act as unofficial ambassadors were considered rather as bores by those with whom they worked.
Although we have not done enough in multiplying these contacts, we have done a great deal in training students coming to this country. Last year at our universities, colleges and advanced schools we had 40,000 students from overseas, as compared with 10,000 only ten years ago. Two-thirds of those 40,000 were from Commonwealth countries. Our educational system absorbs more overseas students than does the educational system of any other country, and this superiority is heightened even more so if we take into account our proportionate population.
Of the 40,000 students I have mentioned, however, a comparatively small

number were doing teacher training. That is why I welcome the Bill. Last year only 730 were thus engaged at teacher training establishments—660 in England and Wales, 68 in Scotland and two in Northern Ireland. The university departments of education were more widely used than were the teacher training colleges. To some extent this probably reflects the difference in standards. As my right hon. Friend said earlier, there should be more consultation with training colleges. I hope that there will be a two-way consultation.
I know that it is improper for Governments to put pressure upon free institutions, but the petty restrictions imposed on students in large numbers of our teacher training colleges leave a lot to be desired. Thinking back to my student days, I found that to those graduates who left the freedom of universities to go to teacher training colleges it was like going back to school again. It is surely unnecessary to restrict teaching students in such a way as to make them feel schoolchildren rather than people on a higher level. I hope that whoever sits on these bodies in our teacher training colleges will bear that point in mind.
It is interesting to compare the English and Scottish figures. In England, the overwhelming majority engaging in teacher training every year were training for secondary school teaching. In Scotland, however, 30 out of 68 were training for university and college teaching. For some reason Scotland seems to attract potential university and college teachers from abroad to a much greater degree than does England. The Scottish figures also show a very heavy bias in favour of African students. Forty seven out of 68 last year were from Africa—which is a very good thing.
In order to persuade teachers to go abroad we must guarantee, if necessary, to make up their salaries—and the disparity may be very wide in some cases. We must also take into account differences in local income tax, and make sure that those who go abroad are not penalised by heavy rates of tax. We must also consider cost-of-living bonuses, superannuation rights and security of contracts. If, when a teacher is abroad in a strange country, he is sacked, or suddenly finds himself accused of some misdemeanour, he is in a very tricky position. All the time


these people are abroad we must watch over their position in order to see that their contract rights are guaranteed, as well as their living conditions and those of their wives and children.
When they move out of the ambit of our free National Health Service they sometimes have to pay very heavily for medical services. Normally, they must also pay for domestic help, which they would not have at home. There is also extra expenditure in connection with refrigerators and air conditioners.
Finally, we must give them some sort of guarantee of a suitable job at home when their tour is over. Since 1957 the Ministry of Education has done quite a lot to spread among teachers the feeling that when they return home their promotion rights will be guaranteed and they will be reabsorbed into our educational system. But the universities, as my right hon. Friend said earlier and as other speakers have mentioned, are in a different position here. This is not the task of the Government. It is for the vice-chancellors and principals and courts and senates of universities to get across to their staff that service abroad does not prejudice promotion at home. There is a feeling that once a don has left our hallowed shores and sailed to some remote Asian or African coast he is academically finished. His decision to go abroad is frequently received with astonishment by his colleagues.
I had a long discussion with a friend of mine who was offered a chair at the University of the West Indies. He was filled with doubts and apprehensions about accepting, but finally decided to go. He has since filled the chair with distinction from the point of view of scholarship and teaching, and I think that he has forged a valuable link between his Scottish university and the University of the West Indies. But the grim fact remains that he may have lost his place in the queue for academic promotion. Probably in no other field so much as that of university chairs and Oxford and Cambridge fellowships does the old adage apply so forcibly—
Out of sight, out of mind.
The idea, which is sometimes held by the public, of university professors and lecturers being indifferent to worldly claims and sitting in book-lined studies absorbed in weighty tomes, indifferent

to the desires of promotion, is far from the truth. There is no reason why it should be true; university teachers are human and they want to get on, and we must take account of this in the inducements which we offer to try to persuade them to go to other countries.
My second point refers to the selection of those going abroad to fill teaching posts, whether at senior level or university level. I hope that there will be flexibility about the methods used. I am glad to see from the White Paper that there will be no officially recognised United Kingdom recruitment agency. I have a high opinion of the British Council, which I think does splendid work, but I should not like to see it the sole channel through which the many appointments to universities and schools abroad are made.
There is a feeling among provincial universities and the Scottish universities that for the higher educational and cultural posts abroad the British Council shows a marked preference for Oxford and Cambridge graduates and we should not like to see that extended or perpetuated. I should be reluctant to see appointments to university posts exclusively in the hands of small academic committees. I have the highest opinion of British university professors in the sphere of scholarship. I have worked among them for a number of years. But I have a lesser opinion of their unfailing capacity to select the right people for senior jobs in countries abroad. Often they have an inadequate knowledge of what is wanted.
I remember being interviewed by a small committee of professors for a fellowship. One of them, an Oxford don, a very irrascible, bad tempered and slightly neurotic gentleman, had only the slenderest idea of the kind of country to which he was appointing me or to which I hoped I should get appointed. It was not until afterwards, when he had given me a thoroughly bad-tempered and, I thought, ill-informed interview, that I realised that one of the young men waiting in the corridor outside was one of his students whom he hoped would get the job—and he did. Since then this well-known don has appeared on television, and I notice that in the intervening years he has lost none of his bad temper nor his vanity.
So please do not leave it exclusively to the professors. They are great and grand people, and in the field of scholarship British professors are second to none, but often they reflect inter-university jealousies and sometimes are ignorant about the rest of the world outside our shores. There are, of course, many exceptions—some of my best friends are professors—but there is this danger. So let the selection methods be wide and do no let us have a small body exclusively appointed for this work. I hope that the various committees and councils likely to be consulted will bear my words in mind.
My final and perhaps in some ways a more serious point refers to Cmnd. Paper 1032 recommendations from which have been adopted in this Bill. Paragraph 3 of the White Paper states:
The free association in the Commonwealth of countries which share a belief in the common principles of justice, a democratic way of life and personal freedom, affords a special opportunity for the pooling of resources. There is an obligation on those with more highly developed educational facilities to help their fellow members. But all races and people have made their characteristic contribution to the building up of knowledge, culture and values, and all have something to give. There are no frontiers to human knowledge; knowledge is not the exclusive prerogative of any nation or group of nations.
Here, I think, we are under some difficulty in pursuing the aims of Commonwealth educational co-operation in our relationships with South Africa, because South Africa is unique in being the only university in the Commonwealth which directly bases its university and school education upon the superiority of one race over another.
I should like to know whether any special relationships are contemplated under this Bill with the Union of South Africa. The native and coloured peoples have been debarred from the main South African universities, the English-speaking and Afrikaans-speaking universities, and new Bantu colleges have been set up. They violate the educational principles embodied in this Bill. These are not colleges open to all races and peoples or colleges which teach all subjects. They are tribal colleges set up in tribal reserves, and here education has been deliberately down-graded. The University College of Fort Hare, opened 44 years ago by General Botha and planned to lead Africans to the liberal,

wide and advanced education envisaged in this Bill, has been disaffiliated from its parent university and—

Mr. Alport: Perhaps I can help the hon. Gentleman by saying that up to the present we have had no intimation that South Africa is taking part in this scheme, so that the problem which he has raised does not apply.

Dr. Thompson: I am glad to have that information. I hope that if South Africa does apply the Minister will bear in mind the educational system in that country seems to be in collision with some of the objectives of this Bill.
My right hon. Friend and the hon. Lady the Member for Plymouth, Devon-port (Miss Vickers) mentioned teaching English and expressed surprise at learning about this new field of research and training in the teaching of English as a second language. May I be parochial for a second time and say that at the University of Edinburgh there is established a school of applied linguistics with research and training in the teaching of English as a second language. It gives a special one-year diploma for senior teacher training and English language teaching specialists from the Commonwealth. The Department of Applied Linguistics and the Department of Phonetics in Edinburgh, under the direction of Mr. David Abercrombie, enjoy an international reputation and are visited by scholars from all over the world, who come to study their methods and techniques. I hope that the University of Edinburgh, whose activities unfortunately do not seem so well known in this House, might be consulted in some of the work involved in this sphere.
I urge the merits of this Bill to the House and consider it the kind of Bill with which hon. Members on both sides may be proud to be associated.

7.49 p.m.

Mr. R. P. Hornby: I wish to emphasise the real importance of this subject at this time. We are witnessing a very rapid political development in many parts of the Commonwealth, and as these new countries develop they are depending for their administration, teaching and for many other services on a minute university population. That is a fact which we must remember when-looking at this Bill and considering what we are trying to achieve by it.
I will quote very briefly two or three figures from a recent publication on Commonwealth education produced in this country. They show the number of full-time students in Commonwealth universities at the present time: Ghana 320, with an extra 355 in this country; Nigeria, with a population of over 30 million, 560, with an additional 881 in this country; Malaya, 1,570, with an additional 263 in this country; Central Africa, 70, with an additional 116 in this country. Comparing those figures with our university population of about 100,000 and Canada with about 75,000, one sees the gap that one is trying to fill by this Bill.
Of course, we cannot fill the whole of that gap by direct action, by the export of suitably qualified teacher trainers, doctors, agricultural advisers or whoever they may be. But we may be able to place a sufficient number of properly trained people in key positions at the request of the receiving countries in such a way that in an academic generation's time the picture may be very different and those countries may be able to do far more for themselves. That, it seems to me, is what we are trying to do.
About these key posts, I think that this Bill can help very considerably. To those who are worried lest we are taking away from ourselves teachers whom we can ill-afford to spare, I think that it would be a mistake to under-estimate the willingness of people in this country to undertake adventures such as this once they understand the need and once it is shown clearly how that need is to be met in clear, detailed administrative terms.
I turn briefly to the provisions of the Bill. It looks, as some people have said, as if it is a very modest Measure. I am not so sure that it is. In the inflated terms of the day, £6 million spread over the next five years sounds fairly small fry. Let us look at what it is going to achieve. In terms of training places here —and I think that I heard my hon. Friend rightly at the start of the debate—we are probably going to provide for something like 400 extra people in this country. That is on top of the existing figure of 730 people being trained for the teaching profession from the Commonwealth in this country and is a pretty substantial increase.
Secondly, as to the traffic going the other way, this (Bill will provide in a few years for 400 extra people permanently serving abroad. How does that compare with the numbers abroad in the Commonwealth at the present time? I gather that the figures are about 3,000 people a year going abroad to parts of the Commonwealth for teaching purposes. Of that 3,000 probably one half or more are going to the old countries of the Commonwealth, Canada, Australia and so on. The parts with which we are particularly concerned in the Bill are the younger and particularly the African and Asiatic countries.
It seems to me that 400 extra permanently serving abroad as compared with perhaps 1,500 or slightly less now —probably considerably less, I would guess—going to those younger countries is a fairly substantial addition. I would say to those who criticise this pioneering Bill, because that is what it really is, as being inadequate and minute, let them look at the proportionate increase compared with what is happening at the present time.
The main point that I want to make, having set our mind to this purpose and produced this Bill, is that we should get the administration of it right. I would like to mention four points to which I think we want to pay particular attention. Some of these have been particularly mentioned.
First there is the question of selection. It is no good our just saying that we will send teachers for this purpose. We must send very good teachers, otherwise we might very well defeat our own objective. Secondly, if we want to recruit people to this service—I am thinking particularly of the outward traffic from this country—we must make certain that they are fully informed of what is wanted and conditions to which they will be going. In addition to selecting good people, we do not want, having done that, to find frustrated people, dissatisfied with their conditions of work, feeling let down and that they have come to something which they did not expect.
Thirdly, I think that the Bill is absolutely right in being broad and generous in its financial terms to the individual. It gives real powers to meet the individual needs of people going


to particularly selected posts. That is what we want to do. In choosing these selected posts we should be working very much in co-operation with and alongside the receiving Governments. Fourthly— this has been mentioned several times, and I shall not re-emphasise it again— there are the provisions for making proper return to this country, and, I would add, in the traffic back from this country to those who come here to train. Those provisions are important. Several safeguards have been mentioned already.
On the question of people coming to this country for training, by and large I am fairly satisfied with what I have read and heard of what people are now trying to do to get it right. I am sure that a great deal of thought has been given to this since the Commonwealth Education Conference at Oxford, and I think that most of the relevant points have been met and people are now trying to put them into effect. I am thinking of things like proper living accommodation, proper reception facilities, and the proper sending of information to people before they leave their own countries, making certain particularly in the universities that there is a persona] responsibility accepted by someone for incoming students. All these things are important, and I think that attention is being given to them.
I am a little less certain that we have thought quite as hard about the problems concerning those going from this country to the territories overseas. There is selection, for instance. How is this to be done? Presumably it will be done largely by representatives of the Governments to whom the person is going. Will there be opportunity for the pooling of some common experience in this field, as to the sort of people who are suitable and the sort of local difficulties that occur? If so, who will do that pooling of experience?
There are many Ministries and Ministers accepting partial responsibility in this matter. There is the Commonwealth Relations Office, the Colonial Office, the Ministry of Education, the Scottish Office, and so on. It seems to me that there is probably scope for the setting up of some adequate and proper liaison organisation to see that experience is shared without setting up one single selection body.
I think that the question of some central unit or single unit applies also to the problem of recruitment. If and when we want to get large volumes of recruits coming forward, as I hope we shall, to undertake this work, to whom do they write? To each of the individual High Commissioners in this country? To the Ministry of Education? To the Colonial Office, or to whom? It seems to me that we would get better response from people interested in this if we could advertise the fact in the teaching journals of one single authority that could at least dispense information about opportunities that may or may not be available, not just in one part of Africa, but in other parts of Africa and elsewhere in the world. One would at least get a better flow of information going outwards to people who may be interested.
Thirdly, there is the question of information and what I would call pre-training before leaving this country. If we are sending someone out from this country for three years, which is basically an expensive term and one recognises it as such, it is important economically that he should be as well informed and as well trained as possible before he leaves this country. Teachers have fairly long holidays during which I think they would be willing to prepare themselves for what they are going to undertake. If we can organise on as full a scale as possible an effective training before anyone leaves this country, the person leaving this country will be as nearly as possible at the peak of efficiency when he gets overseas at an earlier stage in the three-year course than he otherwise would be. That would be an effective and economical thing to do.
Fourthly, as regards application for appointments after the tour of duty is over, I hope that the local education authority which a teacher leaves will keep in touch with the teacher and ensure that he is plied, particularly towards the end of his term, with information about possible posts to which he might be interested to return. I do not think that that would be difficult. Local education authorities are usually only too anxious to keep tabs on good people whom they have lost. One hopes that it is the good people who are going out under this scheme.
Fifthly, and perhaps most important of all in the long term, is the education of public opinion concerning the vital need for the promotion of this work. How are we doing this? What do we intend to do? Who are the key people who are to applaud the temporary emigration of good teachers from this country and will then welcome them back? Are they directors of education, Chairmen of education committees, or whom? Whom are we going to try to impress with the necessity and importance of this work? I understand that the Ministry of Education quite recently held an important conference dealing with this whole subject. I hope that we shall not leave it at that, but will consider every possible means of following up this work, so that we continue to make ground with influential public opinion, particularly in the educational world.
I conclude with two comments on the whole field. In our zeal for bringing people to this country for training, I hope that we shall recognise that there is some danger sometimes of reducing the prestige of local universities in the overseas territories. In a sense, the more opportunities there are for coming to this country or going to America and elsewhere, and the higher the prestige of what is being done here, the greater will be the need for emphasising and helping in every possible way the development of local universities, colleges and institutions.
In that respect, something can be done by encouraging where possible—here one might sometimes look at the outside funds from foundations and so on— temporary visits on a fairly short-term basis of distinguished fellows or lecturers of one sort or another who would add to the prestige of the universities and colleges they visit.
With those thoughts, and again reiterating what I believe to be the very vital importance of this educational work at a time when our administrators are retreating from many overseas territories, I wish the Bill well and hope that, when the next Commonwealth Education Conference takes place in the Autumn of 1961 in New Delhi, we shall be able to report that this Bill is flourishing and effective and look forward to still further

measures of educational co-operation within the Commonwealth.

8.4 p.m.

The Rev. Llywelyn Williams: It is a very pleasant experience to address the House in a debate on a Bill which so obviously is receiving the warm commendation of every Member of the House. Nothing but good can come from this very far-reaching Bill. It may not be as ambitious as some of us would wish it to be, but to the extent that it carries out the enlightened conclusions of the Oxford Commonwealth Education Conference it must receive our blessing and wholehearted support.
Reference has been made already to the tremendous need for this Measure in the Commonwealth at large. Most hon. Members who have addressed the House so far have drawn from their experience of the great Continent of Africa. I am unable to do that, because I have not visited Africa. However, last year I had the great privilege of visiting our territories in the Caribbean. I can testify to the very great need, which the Bill will in some measure satisfy, which exists in our territories in the Caribbean.
While the debate has been in progress, I have been thinking of a memorable experience I had in the Caribbean, which will remain with me for many years. It was a visit I paid to a school in the heart of a mahogany forest estate, in British Honduras. It was a very simple and primitive building. There were no sides and no partitions. A few hundred children, ranging from tiny tots to husky young lads, and their counterparts amongst the girls, were all herded together. Teachers were scattered all over this strange concourse trying to do what I thought was the impossible—to impart to these youngsters of varying ages the tremendous thrill that education can mean to those who are benefiting from it. But every one of these teachers was untrained.
There is no doubt that the need is terrific. I am certain that we shall be able to do much under the Bill, to meet the need. We shall have done a very good day's work in the House in giving the Bill a Second Reading.
Reference has been made also—I can testify to the truth of this—to the tremendous passion for education. One must use a strong word such as


"passion" to describe the attitude of parents in the overseas territories. There is a tremendous passion for education. There is a desire amongst parents which will brook no easy opposition or hindrance that their children will receive what they call education. Some of us may have become a little cynical or sophisticated in our approach to education. Perhaps at one time we, too, thought that education was the alpha and omega of everything and that, if we had free education and ample facilities for education in this country, we would have reached the great Utopia.
I do not think that all of us share that view now. At least, we are not completely bemused by education. We know that we need something in addition to education to achieve anything like the type of society which we would describe as ideal. I should not like that remark to be misinterpreted. I should not like anyone to think that I in any sense have anything but the highest regard for education as one of the paths leading to progress, but some of our illusions have been dissipated by sad experience in the last few years. We are possibly not as naive as we were in our attitude to education.
But the people in the overseas territories still live in that wonderland, in that wonderful climate of public opinion, in which they believe that when their children receive what they call education Heaven will have appeared on earth. The passion is tremendous. A number of people engaged in educational work in overseas territories have told me that mothers, without batting an eyelid, will tell the most obvious untruths about the ages of their children so that they might get them into school.
School accommodation is limited and often the entry age is eight, but it is a common experience to find mothers bringing three-year and four-year olds to the school and insisting to the headmaster that they are small for their age, but really eight years of age. This is to be found in many of our territories. We have done a tremendous amount for these people and are prepared to do a tremendous amount in future, but the illustration I have given is evidence of how much education means to them.
I have cheated about my age only once, I think, and I am not particularly

ashamed of the deceit. I was a voracious reader as a youngster and in my town we did not have a children's library. When I was nine years of age, I wrote on a form that I was 11, because that was the permitted age for entry to the facilities of that library. So I can quite understand how these people feel and how they indulge in an almost Gilbertian situation by trying to convince educational authorities that four-year olds are very small for their age and are really aged eight.
I have heard of mothers who have told ticket inspectors that their boy, who obviously was eight was only five years of age and, therefore, was eligible for a half-fare on the railway. We in Wales and our Scottish cousins, possibly more than the English, used to have a great passion for education. Our fathers never regarded any sacrifice as too great if it were made to give their children educational advancement. It may well be that today everything is being taken for granted in this Welfare State, but I assure the House from my experience of overseas territories that there is a tremendous need, an eloquent need. It has been testified to by other hon. Members during the debate. The hunger and thirst, the passion for education, is something moving and gripping in its effect.
When I visited a school in the Grand Cayman Island I saw one of the most beautiful island of the world. What I saw in the Grand Cayman Island prompts me to refer to a danger which can happen in that part of the world more easily than in other parts in the matter of denominational schools. Goodness knows, I am no supporter of denominational schools at home, but, generally, I should have to agree that the dark picture which prevails where schools in the Commonwealth are concerned would be much darker were it not for mission schools.
I do not think sufficient testimony has been paid in the debate to what religious missions from this country have done throughout the centuries, not only in building schools, but in sending out missionaries regularly to do educational work as well as medical and more specifically spiritual or religious work. Today, in the mission field, there is a great dearth of candidates, so the problem of school teachers in many of those overseas territories is intensified by the


increasing lack of candidates for mission work.
The influence of the Southern States of America is being increasingly felt in the Cayman Islands, as I am sure the Minister of State for Commonwealth Relations will know. I want to be charitable and not to indulge in polemics against other creeds or forms of religion, but I am worried about some of the strange esoteric sects which emanate from the Southern States of America. I had an instance of this in the Grand Cayman Island. There is a school in this British territory run by the Seventh Day Adventists. I entered that school and could sense at once that my presence was not particularly welcome.
I looked around and picked up some of the school books, especially history books. There is a very definite anti-British slant, or bias, in the history which is being taught in that school. I should like the Minister to ask for a report from the district commissioner to see whether what I am saying is right. I did not like it. I think that it is a situation which needs to be looked into very carefully.
I have nothing in the way of anti-Americanism in my spirit. I have visited America and I am fond of that great country, but I do not want any anti-British slant introduced into schools for which we are responsible. A curious thing about us is that, even though we may be far from being flag-waving jingoists at home, and sometimes are critical of our Commonwealth, abroad, in these Colonies—I speak for myself, for I cannot speak for anyone else—I feel a real sense of pride in what we have done as a Commonwealth. I do not like to see that Commonwealth denigrated by any anti-British colonialism taught by some of these strange religious sects emanating from the Southern States of America.
I do not want to prolong the debate unduly. Having spoken of the need, the tremendous desire and passion for education in these territories, my final point may be regarded as a practical one. It is not easy to recruit teachers, yet, if so many of our young teachers could see the tremendous challenge and tremendous thrill of this work, the enriching experience it would be for

them to go to some of our territories in Africa and in the West, I think they would respond to the appeal. I suggest that the Minister of State and the Minister of Education might consider sending a representative from the Colonial Office, the Commonwealth Relations Office, or the Ministry of Education, to our training colleges to put the case to students in their last year when they are just about to leave college and start the great job of educating youngsters, opening young minds to the tremendous challenge of new ideas.
That is the best time to do this work. Once they have settled down, married, entered into commitments about the home, and so on, it will be much more difficult. I recommend the practical course of visiting the training colleges before these students have finally decided where to start in the great work of being a teacher so that we may put the case which has been made by so many hon. Members on both sides of the House today, relating it particularly not only to the benefit which it will bring to the development of the Commonwealth countries in the twentieth century but also to the tremendous benefit which it will bring to the intellectual, moral and spiritual development of the individuals concerned.

8.21 p.m.

Mr. George Thomas: I apologise to the Minister of Education and to the House for not having been in the Chamber during the debate. I merely wish to say that the Minister must know that he has the good will of the teaching profession in this matter, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) would be quick to tell him.
The teaching profession in this country is being quite magnanimous in realising that it must be prepared to make certain sacrifices for the good will of the Commonwealth. Although we are concerned about the fact that an adequate supply of teachers to meet our own problem will require tremendous efforts by the Ministry, the teaching profession is willing and anxious to co-operate to the full to ensure that the scheme reaps the success which it merits. I believe that it will be a good thing for the teachers concerned, since nothing broadens the mind more than travel: and travel in the


British Commonwealth is an experience which inspires anyone, as it has my hon. Friend the Member for Abertillery (Rev. L1. Williams), with a sense of great pride in the achievements as well as a sense of the challenge of what remains to be done.
I do not wish to speak about the details of the Bill. I wish only to say that the teaching profession is one fellowship all the world over. One of the most notable characteristics of the great education conferences in this country of the postwar years has been the way in which teachers from the British Commonwealth have attended. The knowledge that our own people will be taking their gifts out to the Colonies will, I believe, be a fillip to those working in those parts.
I visited the Seychelles last year and I know what a tonic it would be if only one of these teachers could go and help those who are already labouring in a lonely little outpost like that. I hope that the smaller Dependencies will play as great a part in this wonderful scheme as those which are better known to us in this House. I wish the Bill well and I congratulate the Minister on the initiative that he has taken.

8.24 p.m.

The Minister of Education (Sir David Eccles): My right hon. Friend the Minister of State and I have been deeply impressed and greatly encouraged by the sincerity with which all hon. Members who have spoken have welcomed the Bill. The Ministry of Education is entirely behind the Bill, and we shall do all that we possibly can to make it a success, but, as many hon. Members have pointed out, it is not a foregone conclusion. We have a great many things to do if we are to have the climate of opinion which is necessary, and a response is to be made by the individuals concerned.
I remember very well the day when we discussed education at the Commonwealth Economic Conference at Montreal. I think it is fair to say that a great many of the representatives of the old Commonwealth felt that the scheme for university scholarships would be the one that received the greatest welcome. The old Commonwealth countries welcomed very much, but nothing like as much as the new Commonwealth countries, the idea that we

might help them with their primary and secondary school teaching. The speeches made then returned to my mind today as I listened to the figures given by my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Mr. Goodhart), the hon. Lady the Member for Flint, East (Mrs. White) and the hon. Member for Abertillery (The Rev. L1. Williams).
Moving as those figures were this afternoon, when they were given by the actual representatives of the countries concerned—they explained what the hon. Member for Abertillery called "the passion fox education"—I think we all felt that we really had to meet the need to the best of our ability. We followed that up with the Oxford conference, and after that we had at Church House in February a very remarkable conference of local education authorities, teachers' representatives, representatives of the churches, the institutes of education and universities, all of which pledged themselves in the fullest possible way to make the scheme work.
It is one thing to express these sentiments in general, which we all feel very keenly. It is another thing to find the teachers when we are very short indeed in this country. It is something to ask of a local education authority which is suffering under a rationing scheme proposed by me and which is, therefore, in almost every case, not getting as many teachers as it would like to have. It really is quite another thing to ask the employers—the local education authorities—to feel that the need abroad is so much greater than the need which they find on their own doorstep—which it is their duty as the representatives of the ratepayers to meet as best they can— and so great that we ought even now to start making these sacrifices.
Hon. Members have always agreed with the Minister of Education when he has said that we have too many oversized classes, and it is perfectly clear that we have. If we are to encourage these teachers to go abroad, and I am sure we must, we must reckon that it means a sacrifice for us at home, but it is a sacrifice which I am certain we should all like to make.
It is not just the call for service, which I agree is the overriding reason for doing this. We must also look to the conditions of the service. Therefore, we have


worked out—I hope that with the aid of the money which Parliament will give us under the Bill we can bring it to actuality—a code of secondment which we hope all local authorities will adopt. It is a code under which they will guarantee to teachers who leave, having received the basic scale only as their pay, that they will get the basic scale when they return.
We have also worked out a further set of provisions for those in posts of responsibility, who were, therefore, receiving allowances over the basic scale, and the local authorities will give them a two-year guarantee when they return. If those teachers apply for posts under another authority than the one in whose service they were when they went abroad, then it will be agreed that the new authority, the new employer, will accept the references from the old employer and employ the teachers as though they had been in the new employer's service. If any hon. Member would like to see the conditions in the code of secondment I should be very glad to send it to him.
That, and also the conditions for safeguarding pension rights, are now being embodied in a circular which is just about to go out to all local education authorities, and which is the result of the February conference, when we put these proposals to them. I think it should at least establish clearly that financially the teacher going abroad from this country will be no worse off, and that it is the wish of the Government and of all those local authorities that on return it should be a mark of merit to have had this overseas experience.
Let me say frankly, that is not what teachers find today—at least, only a small proportion of them do. They may feel inside themselves that they have benefited from teaching in Africa or elsewhere, but they say that the benefit is not clearly recognised in most cases by their next employers.
It is that which we have to change, and that is one of the purposes of setting up the National Council for the Supply of Teachers Overseas: partly to get the climate of opinion right, so that there can be a general campaign going on all the time to help teachers who are wanting information before they go abroad, to get justice done to them when they come home; and, in general, to keep local

education authorities and other bodies continually aware of what is going on and of the various needs. I think that a central body of that kind, on which we shall, of course, put representatives of the university departments as well, so that the teaching of English and other subjects will be thought about, will do a lot of good. I hope that that answers my hon. Friend the Member for Ton-bridge (Mr. Hornby), because he wanted just this sort of body to pull together the conditions surrounding this overseas service.
It is pretty clear, when the demand overseas is so colossal and so beyond what we in these small Islands can conceivably meet in the way of teachers, that the most rewarding way of helping them is in fact to train teachers who will then go and train other teachers in the overseas Territories. There is no doubt that if we put as much emphasis as we can on teacher training that will multiply the effect.
I can tell my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Miss Vickers), who knows so much about these overseas conditions, especially in Malaya, and my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Mr. J. Howard), that if they will look at paragraph 8 of the White Paper they will see that we are going to send abroad members of the staffs of our training colleges so that they may study the local conditions and requirements of the teachers whom they are going to train in this country. We plan something like ten visits a year.
My hon. Friend the Member for Devonport asked whether students here would get experience, for instance, in evening institutes. Certainly I agree with her that we must try to see that that is so. There is, of course, a demand for adult education in the Commonwealth which is almost, I would say, insatiable; because it is impossible to apply modern technical methods unless one has some education, and many men in middle life want to try to catch up a little on their deficiencies. The students coming here will have special courses designed for them, and we shall naturally try to meet the requirements of the overseas Governments. The overseas Governments will state to us what they want the students particularly to learn, and we shall try to meet their wishes.
The right hon. Member for West Bromwich (Mr. Dugdale) knows a great deal about deaf and dumb teaching and the need to increase the number of teachers. I can assure him that, if the overseas Governments ask for places here for teachers to be trained in methods of helping deaf and dumb children, or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Devonport asked, blind children, we shall, of course, do our best to find the places. So far, we have not had any definite applications for places for teacher training for deaf and dumb children, but we believe that two are on their way from Southern Rhodesia. Perhaps what the right hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend have said in the debate will stimulate some applications. I entirely agree that we know how to teach people to help these handicapped children, and I am sure that we can through our training help our overseas friends.
The equipment in schools overseas must be the responsibility of the local Government. It is a very expensive item. The other day, I was told by a publisher of educational textbooks that there are as many children of school age in Nigeria as there are in this country and, therefore, as many textbooks should be required there as in all our schools. One can appreciate the problem there merely in regard to textbooks. We shall have to do what we can to help, but the equipment of the schools themselves must be left with the local Governments. I do not know whether it would come under the commonwealth development and welfare funds. I do not know what my right hon. Friend would say about that.
The hon. Member for Dunfermline Burghs (Dr. A. Thompson) spoke about the universities. We value very much the work which is being done in linguistics at Edinburgh and at London. In the White Paper, the operative word is "relatively". This is relatively unexplored compared with other teaching techniques and, through the Commonwealth liaison unit which has been set up, with a distinguished Indian doctor, Dr. Jha, as the first director, we are suggesting a conference at Makerere next year where all the problems of the teaching of English as a secondary language might be studied.
The right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Marquand) asked me

about allowances for university teachers going abroad. In paragraph 13 of the White Paper on Commonwealth Educational Co-operation, it is said that there will be a scheme similar to that for the schools. The fact of the matter is that the universities will have their own scheme but they will obtain the money under this Bill. Therefore, there will be the same scales of allowances applied to university teachers going overseas under the Bill as to school teachers.

Mr. Marquand: Does that mean that the apparent contradiction which I discovered in paragraph 10 was just a misreading on my part? Is it an unqualified assurance that the right hon. Gentleman has just given?

Sir D. Eccles: The opening words of paragraph 13 are
Similar arrangements will be made to encourage teachers to take up key posts in universities and university colleges",
and then it goes on to describe how the arrangements will be made. "Similar" means the same as the arrangements for allowances in respect of school teachers.

Mr. Marquand: Unfortunately, I have not the White Paper before me at the moment. Will the right hon. Gentleman look at the introductory words of paragraph 10 which suggest that there is a difference between what is planned for schools and what is planned for universities?

Sir D. Eccles: The words "other than universities" are there simply because the universities, being what they are, would not like the Minister of Education to have anything to do with the payment of their salaries and allowances. Therefore, we exclude them in paragraph 10 in order to bring them back on their own, in full academic freedom, in paragraph 13.
The hon. Member for Dunfermline Burghs, who knows so very much about the universities, stressed the fact that dons who went abroad were not highly regarded when they came home. I was asked what we could do about this, and he quite rightly said that this is a matter for the universities themselves. We can do something about teachers, with the aid of the local education authorities, to see that they get the jobs when they come back, but the universities—and I hope


they will take note of this debate—will have to make their own arrangements, and I think it would be a very good thing if they did.
I was glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge thought that the Bill was a good start, and I agree with him that it is only a start. No one can tell how far we can go in this direction. We know that the need is quite beyond fulfilment. We should like to do as much as we can, and we shall depend on public opinion. I think that the debate we have had today will do a great deal of good to get public opinion to realise that this is a problem which we simply must not just talk about and then do nothing.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Peel.]

Committee Tomorrow.

Orders of the Day — COMMONWEALTH TEACHERS [MONEY]

[Queens Recommendation signified.]

Considered in Committee under Standing Order No. 84 (Money Committees).

[Major Sir WILLIAM ANSTRUTHER-GRAY in the Chair]

Resolved,

That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to make further provision for matters arising out of the recommendations of the Commonwealth Education Conference, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any sums required by the Secretary of State for making payments for, or in connection with, the provision of teachers for the Commonwealth or the fostering of Commonwealth co-operation in educational matters, being such sums as together with the sums so provided under the Commonwealth Scholarships Act, 1959, do not in the aggregate exceed six million pounds or such greater amount as may be provided by Orders in Council coming into force not earlier than the first day of April nineteen hundred and sixty-five.—[Mr. Alport.]

Resolution to be reported.

Report to be received Tomorrow.

Orders of the Day — DOCK WORKERS (PENSIONS) BILL

Considered in Committee; reported, without Amendment; read the Third time and passed.

Orders of the Day — IMPORT DUTIES (TOMATOES)

8.45 p.m.

The Minister of State, Board of Trade (Mr. F. J. Erroll): I beg to move,
That the Import Duties (General) (No. 5) Order, 1960 (S.I. 1960, No. 811), dated 6th May, 1960, a copy of which was laid before this House on 10th May, be approved.
I hope that the House will not mind if I detain hon. Members for a few minutes on the subject of this Order, because it is a matter of very widespread importance to the interests concerned.

Mr. Arthur Holt: As this is a very important matter, I wonder whether the Minister would explain fully why the tariff has to go up?

Mr. Erroll: That was exactly my purpose in saying that I proposed to make a speech of some minutes to explain the subject fully, although I realise that there are many hon. Members who have no tomato growers in their constituencies who may find that the technicalities of this Order are somewhat complicated.
This Order, which was made under the Import Duties Act, 1958, increases the non-preferential duty on fresh tomatoes from £1 17s. 4d. per cwt. to £2 16s. 0d. cwt. in the period 16th May to 15th June and to £2 6s. 8d. per cwt. from 16th June to 31st July. In more simple terms, the increases are from 4d. per 1b.—a duty which has operated since December, 1953 —to 6d. and 5d. a 1b. respectively. The Order takes the form of an amendment to the Import Duties (General) Order, 1958, which introduced the present form of the tariff.
We recognise that we have an obligation to support horticulture, and we have frequently declared that we regard the tariff as the main instrument for achieving this end. At the same time, where it is a question of changing an existing level of protection, the onus has always been on the industry to make out a case for doing so, and such applications are thoroughly examined by us in the light of all the relevant considerations.
Hon. Members will recall that, in January last year, we had occasion to reject an application for increased import duties on tomatoes throughout the home season because we were not satisfied that there was sufficient justification for raising the tariff. A further application


was made by the home and Channel Islands growers in November last covering the period 16th May to 31st August.
In the light of significant changes in circumstances since the previous application was examined, we decided that there was a case for some increase in the duty in the earlier part of the season. I will outline some of the main considerations which influenced this decision.
During the three seasons 1957–59 a new trend in the tomato trade became apparent. Imports of Dutch tomatoes substantially increased their share of the United Kingdom market. This increase was most marked in the latter half of May, when the Dutch share rose from about 15 per cent. in 1957 to 33 per cent. in 1958, and still remained at 27 per cent. in 1959. In June, in each year the increase was less marked, but still significant—20 per cent. in 1959 compared with 15 per cent. in 1957—and there was also a small increase in July. The Dutch industry is expanding and concentrating increasingly on the early crop. In our view, there was every reason to suppose that the Dutch would continue to capture more of the market in the earlier part of the season if nothing was done.
The market at this time in the season is particularly important to growers using heated glasshouses, which involve higher production costs. These growers rely upon getting better prices then to offset the normal fall in prices as the season progresses. The increased imports have added to the difficulties of those growers who have had to face rising costs of production with no compensating increases in the wholesale prices of tomatoes. Although we have not been able to get fully adequate statistical evidence, it seems reasonably clear that, for various reasons, including the increase in imports, the economic position of the growers has deteriorated. The contraction of the industry which has been a feature of the post-war period has continued.
In the earlier part of the season, also, the incidence of the 4d. duty was low compared with later in the season— averaging about 15 per cent. ad valorem in the latter part of May and 20 per cent. in June. In view of this, and because we had to take account of the

pattern of the increased Dutch share of the market, we decided that a graded increase in the duty, with the higher rate at the beginning of the period, would be justified. We thought, however, that there was no case for an increase in the 4d. duty in August, which was also covered by the application. The incidence of the duty in that month already averages well over 40 per cent. of the value, and although the Dutch share of the market has fluctuated considerably it has shown no tendency to increase during this period.
There is one other aspect of the application. We did not find any case for disturbing the present arrangements in the latter half of May whereby tomatoes of a value not exceeding 1s. 3d. per 1b. are dutiable at 10 per cent. ad valorem instead of 4d. per 1b. The 10 per cent. duty was introduced to allow the cheaper Canary Islands tomatoes to come in at a lower rate of duty. These are of a quality suitable for cooking and, therefore, are not directly competitive with the salad type of tomato which is produced in heated glasshouses. In the main, they are still not directly competitive and imports have been on a substantially reduced scale in this period in the last few years.
I now come to the point to which I am sure the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Holt) will wish me to refer. It is never possible to predict with any certainty how a tariff increase will affect prices to the consumer, but we do not expect that any difference which may result will be very substantial in relation to the prices normally ruling in this part of the season. What we hope the increased duties will do is to check the rise in imports and thus halt the further contraction of our own industry. It is the Government's expectation that this Order will give the growers confidence to take steps to improve their competitive position by whatever means may be appropriate, including the assistance available to them under the Horticulture Act.
This is the case that we present to the House and I hope that it will agree to the Order.

8.55 p.m.

Mr. Frederick Peart: The Minister has explained in detail the reasons for this increase, and I am grateful that he has responded to the House.


I am also glad to see that the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland are present. While this is also a Treasury and Board of Trade matter, fundamentally it is an agricultural matter and, of course, Scotland also is affected.
We are not opposing this Order. There will, however, be arguments—we have had them on previous occasions. This is a very important decision, especially in view of the negotiations now taking place in relation to the Common Market and the Free Trade Area and the controversies that are arising over the "Sixes and Sevens". We sketched upon that in yesterday's debate on the Price Review. It has a particular connection with tomatoes, because we are dealing with a serious competitor—the Dutch producer—to our own home produce.
The last time we debated this matter was in 1953. I shall not go into too much detail, but many Members who participated in that debate will remember it. The spokesman then for the Liberal Party was the hon. Member for Huddersfield, West (Mr. Wade) and, from what has been said already, the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Holt) is to put the Liberal case tonight.
It was argued for the 1953 Orders— which dealt not only with tomatoes, but with fruit and vegetables, also—that there was a need to have a tariff and that this would be preferable to physical import controls. That case was well put by the then President of the Board of Trade, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Monmouth (Mr. Thorney-croft). My hon. Friends on that occasion did not oppose those Orders. Indeed, although many pertinent questions were put to the Minister, in principle the Opposition supported the decision. Even the hon. Member for Huddersfield, West said:
To return to this problem of tariffs versus quantitative restriction, I think that, on balance, there may be an advantage in tariffs. The decision which we are debating tonight involves, I believe, more than a consideration of the pros and cons of tariffs. It raises certain fundamental principles of our policy as a trading nation, and it is in the light of those principles that we must judge these Orders

which we are being asked to approve."— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 10th December, 1953; Vol. 521, c. 2239.]
That is true tonight.

Mr. Donald Wade: It will be fair to me to add that it was a choice of evils as I presented it.

Mr. Peart: I think that I was being fair. I quoted fairly what the hon. Gentleman said. He did not oppose the Orders. The matter was not pressed to a Division by the Liberal Party. The hon. Member for Bolton, West, in view of what he said while the Minister was speaking earlier this evening, virtually approves of the decline or contraction of the British tomato industry.

Mr. Holt: I said that it was a fact.

Mr. Peart: He said it with glee in his voice. I want to see that the home producer gets a fair return, because, in the end, as I am sure Members on both sides agree, the consumer will not benefit if our home producer is forced out of existence and we have to rely on produce from outside. Then this country could be held to ransom for its food by another country.
I therefore argue, as my party has argued, that the producer must have security, and that, in the end, healthy production benefits the consumer and the housewife. That is why I reject what has been said by the hon. Member for Bolton, West.
I shall not go into details of the last general debate we had on this, but there is a reason why horticulture, and, specifically, the tomato industry, must be considered in relation to tariffs or import restrictions. The 1947 Act, which gives guarantees to our main producers, does not affect horticulture. I remember Mr. Tom Williams, who was Minister of Agriculture in 1947, stating emphatically then on behalf of the Labour Government that other methods to protect and help our home producers in horticulture must be considered.
It was always the policy of our Government then to give the industry a measure of protection from unfair competition. That view was repeated time and again, and that is why when, in 1953, the then President of the Board of Trade presented the Order dealing with fruit and vegetables, we did not oppose it. That is


still our view. The tomato is the staple crop of our glasshouse industry. For many producers there is no alternative use for their glasshouses.

Mr. Jack Jones: No.

Mr. Peart: If my hon. Friend disagrees with me, I hope that he will catch the eye of the Chair and make his contribution to the discussion. I am stating the fact that the tomato is the staple crop of the glasshouse industry in this country.

Mr. Jones: To say that the producers of glasshouse tomatoes can do nothing else is nonsense.

Mr. Peart: I did not say that they could do nothing else. For many of them there is no alternative use for their glasshouses.

Mr. Jones: Nonsense.

Mr. Peart: I will not argue about the facts. If other hon. Members can give facts, that will be all right, but from studies that I have made I know that to be the case.
If trade conditions exist which jeopardise the livelihood of those engaged in the glasshouse industry, we must do something about it. I want a prosperous home agricultural industry, and a prosperous home tomato industry. I will not support a policy of cheap imports which would jeopardise that.
The Minister gave figures showing the decline in the acreage of tomatoes under cultivation. I have figures for both heated and unheated tomato production. In 1954, a total of 2,711 acres was under cultivation. Since then the figure has declined to 2,268 acres. The position is serious. As against those figures, the story in Holland, from which we get some supplies during this period, is different. If we take the two types again, in 1954 the total area of tomatoes under glass in the Netherlands was 4,067 acres. By 1959, the figure had risen to 5,997. The story told by the figures is that the acreage under cultivation by one of our main suppliers has risen while there has been a decline in this country.
That is serious, because it should be noted that a change is taking place in the pattern of Dutch production. There

is a much more rapid increase in the production of the heated crop. The figures I gave were for both heated and cold crop. That means that pressure from Holland will be much greater in the early part of our season. That is why this Order is of special importance to our industry. The change in the Dutch pattern will affect our own industry.
We on this side of the House have never supported a cheap food policy. Let me quote from a document which was quoted yesterday, "Prosper the Plough", which sets out the agricultural policy of my party. Indeed, I think that some hon. Members opposite agree with it. It says:
Labour, therefore, feels that the size of our agriculture cannot be considered apart from general economic considerations, and cannot be left to the hazards of a laissez-faire policy. We do not believe that so-called free market forces should be allowed to determine the size and nature of our agriculture. And we do not consider that British farming should be controlled by other countries, many of whom protect their own agriculture in various ways: by subsidies, import protection, monopoly marketing powers and so forth. It could, of course, be argued—indeed it often is—that we should satisfy our growing demand for food by buying in the cheapest markets irrespective of other considerations. But such a policy could be an extremely short-sighted one. In particular, changes in world trade could have very adverse effects upon us; what may be the cheapest market today may either be non-existent or highly expensive next year.
I commend that statement to the hon. Member for Bolton, West, who may take a contrary point of view.
On the ground of broad principle we do not oppose the increase. We recognise that there is a danger in the present situation. In May, 1954, imports of tomatoes from Holland amounted to 967 tons and in May, 1959, to 6,784 tons. Taking the period from May to October, in 1954 we imported 22,953 tons and in 1959 no less than 28,594 tons.
We have always argued that the horticultural industry should set its own house in order. That is why, during the passage of the Horticulture Bill, we argued for the setting up of a horticultural council. We argued that, in the end, the solution of the problems of the horticultural industry lay not just in tariffs or import restrictions but in efficiency within the industry, and in proper marketing. Nevertheless, in present circumstances we are confident that it is right to restrict foreign production at certain periods.
There are many examples of successful co-operation in tomato production. I could quote examples from the Lea Valley, and many hon. Members could quote examples of successful producer co-operatives. That was one purpose of the Horticulture Bill. We argue that our agriculture should not be at the mercy of cheap imports from outside, perhaps diverted from another country to flood our home market, to the detriment of the home producer. Home tomato producers are important; there were 8,400 of them in 1953, although they have declined to 6,000 now. They represent an important section of our agricultural community, employing agricultural workers.

Mr. Jack Jones: The housewife is also important.

Mr. Peart: As my hon. Friend says, the housewife is also important, but I would point out that it will be no gain to the housewife if the British producer is forced out of production. It will be no gain to her if we are at the mercy of a foreign country. I quote the example of Dutch cheese. Not long ago, when there was a shortage, the Dutch Government put a surcharge on cheese, which affected our consumer prices. I would advise my hon. Friend to read carefully the report of the debate in another place, where this point was discussed.
The Labour Party and the Agricultural Workers' Union have always agreed that we want efficiency and better marketing. We have pressed for that over and over again, during the passage of the Horticulture Bill and at other times. At the same time, we do not believe in a policy of cheap food which would harm our producers and consumers. For those reasons, I hope that my hon. Friends will not be critical of the Order.

9.10 p.m.

Major H. Legge-Boorke: I wish to congratulate the Government on their decision and I do so for three reasons.
The first is that they have shown by their action that they are prepared to implement the policy of protecting horticultural growers by means of tariffs even when the extra protection may

affect the cost-of-living index to a slight extent.
The second reason is that it shows beyond doubt that the Government meant what they said, that they regarded the Horticulture Act, designed to produce £7½ million by way of capital grants to the industry, as being in addition and not as alternative to the tariff policy.
The third reason why I particularly welcome this Order is that I feel that we can now ensure that one section of the industry which was suffering more than any other is being given relief which it could not be given through the ordinary channels of the Agriculture Act.
As was said by the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Peart), Mr. Tom Williams, when he was Minister, made clear that all were agreed that we could not guarantee horticultural produce in the same way as the commodities in the First Schedule to the Agriculture Act. The reason is primarily their perishability, but there is also the extraordinary variation in production from year to year. For these reasons we have to ensure that there is adequate machinery to enable the horticultural grower to hold his own.
The hon. Member for Workington was criticised by some of his hon. Friends when he suggested that horticultural growers could not do anything else. That is the case in the Lea Valley. The glasshouses in the Lea Valley happen to form part of the green belt round London and the owners cannot sell out to any other firm or industry. As a result, these houses are completely unmarketable and quite a number of the owners suffer, especially the small owners. Although I should be the first to pay tribute to the co-operative arrangements made for themselves by most of the growers in the Lea Valley, I think that even for them the early months of the season are often extremely anxious, and were particularly so last season.
There is no doubt that the Dutch are aiming at an invasion of the market during that period. Over the years the receipts from this period have provided the principal standby for the home industry to enable it to face the great flood of produce which occurs towards the main crop season later in the year


both from Holland and our home producers. Unless the home producer can be assured of a reasonable return during the early months, a great many growers will go under. So I think that it is a good thing that we have managed to do something to stave off disaster for them for a little longer.
I am sure that a good many hon. Members will have read the letter in The Times of yesterday from Mr. C. D. Pilling, chairman of the Fruit Importers' Association. He pointed out a fact which I do not think has been fully appreciated by many hon. Members, even those who welcome this decision as I do. It is something which I discovered as a result of studying the figures relating to the whole tariff problem over a considerable period. There was a time, especially in the period of the depression, during the 1930s, when, if a tariff was raised, consumption automatically fell. But the purchasing power of the public is increasing now year by year. There is no doubt that as a result of this arrangement, and provided that the demand is still there for a good tonnage of tomatoes, and, also, that the price is still within the range of their ever increasing spending power, people will go on buying the same quantity of tomatoes.
I do not believe that this increase in the tariff will produce a fall in the quantity of imported tomatoes. What I think it will do, as my hon. Friend claimed for it, is to slow down the rate of increase of the imports. Any practical negotiable tariff these days within the machinery of G.A.T.T.—which, as hon. Members know, I find totally pernicious—could never be of a sufficient level to stop imports coming in altogether or actually reduce the amount that came in before the increase was made in the tariff. The only hope is that it will prevent them rising any further or any faster. Mr. Pilling is right—and I accept his argument—in saying that the effect of this tariff is to inflate prices. There is no doubt that that is the effect.
If we want to stand by the growers, to whom both sides of the House are pledged, this is the only thing that we can do if we are to use tariffs as a method of doing it. There may be a case for using another method. I have often thought that as long as we accept any form of Government interference in production, there is a case automatically

for saying that we must accept Government interference in the amount of imports, and a case for having quotas rather than tariffs, but tonight we are dealing with tariffs.
If hon. Members will look at the figures over the years they will see that, although the increase in the volume of vegetables over the last five or six years has, in fact, been very marginal in volume, about 1 per cent. or 2 per cent. and never more than 6 per cent., the increase in the price of imports has risen by as much as 40 per cent. As a result, it has brought about a higher floor in the price realised by the home producer.
The difficulty, as my hon. Friend rightly pointed out, is that the costs to the industry have been rising faster. The real difficulty that we are up against this evening stems from the fact that when 100 per cent. increases in tariffs were made in 1953 and came into operation at the end of that year, the increases had not taken full account of the increase in costs since 1932, when most of the levels of the previous tariff had been arrived at. Therefore, there was still a hangover from 1932 levels which has never been fully taken up and since then there have been very substantial increases in costs.
A good deal of capital has been made by the opponents to this increase in the document which was circulated under the authorship of Mr. Folley, "Tomatoes. The Dutch Way". The more I examine these figures the more convinced I am that this is special pleading almost to the point of deliberate distortion, because that report was not the first one he ever produced. In fact, when he was dealing with this matter before with Mr. Dorling, his Wye College colleague, in 1955, he then gave the fuel costs per half acre at £682 a year. In his latest report he suggests that it has gone down to £630.
What are the facts? The facts, even in Sussex, which has only 7 per cent. of the tomato growing industry, are that the price of anthracite went up by 21 per cent. and large coke by 15 per cent. since Mr. Folley and Mr. Dorling prepared their earlier report. I do not think that hon. Members who pour scorn on the idea of anything but free trade in this country fully appreciate the enormous increases in costs that have taken place.
I do not suggest for a moment that wage costs ought not to have risen. I


am sure that they should have risen to keep pace with the rest of the community. However, we must face the fact that the majority of the tomato growing industry is on the fringe of large towns, including London. Many of the wages which have to be paid are industrial wage rates and not agricultural wage rates.
Even comparing the agricultural wage rate with the Dutch wage rate, the Dutch have an infinite advantage, They have an advantage greater than merely having a lower basic rate. At the particularly important periods when the majority of the crop is coming forward, they have come to an agreement with their trade union to enable them to have a steady rate of pay the whole way through the season, whereas our growers have to pay 30s. a week, and sometimes more, extra in overtime, etc. The Dutch have an immense advantage over our own growers, and on wage costs and fuel costs alone the British grower is at a disadvantage as compared with the Dutch grower.
It could be argued—I believe that the Liberal Party would probably argue this —that it is wrong to give any artificial support to agriculture; there should be a laissez faire policy, the devil take the hindmost, and all that. That is the logical consequence of the policy of the liberal Party, and then they would be right to have free trade. If we accept the obligation of Government artificially to support the agricultural industry, whether by pumping in capital or by giving subsidies, or whatever it may be, the corollary is that we must do something about our external trade by way of Government interference.
The decision at which the Government have arrived in the Order of increasing the price of tomatoes by 2d. a lb., and by 1d. a lb. later, is not a very great sacrifice for the British public to make when all the time the spending power of the British public, thanks to the general prosperity of the country, is going up and up. I agree that there would be a tremendous case against this tariff if the spending power of the public was going down, but we all know that it is not. We all know full well that, on the whole, this country pays per head of the population far less than the real value of its food, if full account is taken of the costs of producing it in this country.
This is a wise decision. I congratulate the Government on having taken it and I hope that now that they have taken it they will, at the same time, realise that we must seriously consider the possibility of finding ways to limit the amount imported, especially when we know that the Dutch may deliberately be sending it in cheaper than they should be in order to capture the early months of the market. Then we shall have a situation exactly as the hon. Member for Workington described it, where the foreigner is dictating the price to us. The bigger the share of the home market the foreigner has, the greater his ability to dictate the price.
I do not think that we should rule out of consideration altogether the fact that the Common Market countries may very well be trying to invade the British market by depressing their prices for the moment and then, as soon as they have got in and gained the dominant position, they will turn the screw and impose whatever price they like on the commodity they are sending in. It is worth remembering that the Common Market countries alone, of which Holland is one, have increased their vegetable production by 3 million metric tons a year. Whereas, pre-war, they used to send us 4 million cwt. of vegetables a year, they now send us 13½ million cwt. A great proportion of that happens to be tomatoes.
The Government are wise to do something to reassure the British tomato grower, because he certainly needs reassuring. Welcome though this tariff increase is to give him that reassurance, it is important that the Government should look even further ahead to see what ways there are of preventing more coming in if the power to purchase goes on increasing at the present rate, because I am sure that we shall have to use more drastic measures than tariffs in future.

9.25 p.m.

Mr. Jack Jones: I do not intervene to oppose this Order, but there are always one or two questions one is entitled to ask when such a Measure is being discussed.
There may be people asking, "What the devil does this fellow know about tomatoes?" The answer is that I have more varieties of tomatoes growing and have won more prizes for them in open


shows than most hon. Members in this House. That has been done in an amateur way, and I do not set myself up as an expert, but I am concerned about tariffs being put on any commodity for any specific purpose. A point was made about the great acreage of land in the Lea Valley being used primarily for tomato growing and that it cannot be used for anything else. I interjected to say "Nonsense". Apparently there is some local agreement which prevents growers using valuable land for any other purpose before March or April when the land is cleared. We are told, in effect, that many acres of valuable land are not used for anything in the months when the Dutch are making use of their hand for lots of other purposes. The Dutch houses are cleared by the end of July. They grow wonderful early lettuce, pot plants and azaleas on that land. Hon. Members should not forget that if we had not taken azaleas from Holland in the early days after the war we should not have been able to get any Belgian steel.
The Minister told us from his brief what he wants the House to know. He lives close to Altrincham, where we put on some good displays, in his constituency. We have got first prizes there against all England, daft as we are. He knows that is a fact. The Minister did not tell the House that he or the Department were satisfied with all the reasons put forward by British growers, with whom I sympathise, and that their claims were valid. I want the best possible wages to be paid in the tomato industry, just as they are paid in my industry. There should be careful investigation of all the claims that the growers have made. For instance, are they as efficient as they claim to be? They use dear coke and dear breeze and, in many cases, very old-fashioned methods of producing heat. I can speak as an expert about the use of coal and coke and the producing of gas in the steel industry and so on. I know that some of these tomato growers' methods are very efficient, but some are as old-fashioned as Noah's Ark.
If it is a question of marketing, is the Minister satisfied that we can compete with the Dutch in marketing methods? In Covent Garden there are wonderful baskets of good quality stuff, but any

housewife could tell hon. Members what happens to those baskets of good quality stuff. They get mixed with inferior produce and she has to pay top price for all of it. Then there is the question of wages. There is a tremendous difference between what the Dutch worker gets for his guilders and what can be bought with the British pound.
I am not sure that British horticultural wages are as good as they should be. The agricultural labourer and the horticultural labourer who can tell what tomorow's weather will be, can drive a lorry or a tractor, milk a cow, or do many things which no hon. Member can do, does not get the wages he deserves. Over the years these labourers have not been organised in trade unions because they are spread about the country and they have not been able to demand the rates which they should get. I shall not go into that question any more, but I want to be sure that the Minister is satisfied that the claims made about wages are valid.
Channel Island growers can teach us some lessons. There are such things as methods of marketing, transport, such as by light railways, and the movement of manure by mechanical methods. I remember that when I was at the Ministry of Supply we had the growers complaining because they wanted five-tined forks and could buy only three-tined forks. Lifting manure with a three-tined fork all day is a Noah's Ark method. The Ministry should look into the sort of things that I have mentioned.
If I were as satisfied as the Minister appears to be that the things to which I have referred are as good as they appear to be, I should be satisfied about a bigger carrot being offered, but I am not as satisfied as all that. If the Minister has not looked at the Dutch growers he should take a look at them and see what methods they adopt. Also, he should look at the newer types of tomatoes which are being grown. Many of our growers are satisfied with what their grandfathers grew. Novices like myself are not satisfied, though.
There are new excellent varieties of tomato on the market which produce bigger crops and have a shorter space between the trusses. Daft as we are, we amateurs know a tidy bit about this business, and we know that we can get


wonderful results in weight from these new plants. If it can be done in a small way by duds like myself, it ought to be possible for it to be done in a bigger way by the Lea Valley experts.
I object, and shall always object, to any inefficient industry being protected by a tariff. We ought always to object to that. My own industry, the steel industry, went in for tariffs at a time when it was—I know this for a fact, speaking as a man who knows a bit about his own industry—very outmoded and inefficient. But that state of affairs does not exist today. We have improved tremendously. I do not object to a tariff being granted where it has been proved that, in spite of efficiency and modern methods, we are still being beset by unfair competition. Unfair competition should be stopped at all times by any means in our power.
I hope that as a result of this debate the Minister and his staff, when discussing this matter with the growers, will make certain that the British housewife is not being exploited in respect of price, nor, also, that the Dutch worker is suffering. Let us be fair about this. We international Socialists would not like to see a situation arise where as the result of a tariff being applied by Britain the Dutch labourers had to accept smaller wages for more work because of the upsetting effects of the tariff in Holland. We must look at these things from a world point of view and follow them up to their logical conclusion.
I hope that as a result of this very healthy debate about one of the healthiest vegetables—I know nothing nicer than a home-grown English tomato with a drop of vinegar on it—a solution to the problem will be found.

9.33 p.m.

Mr. Denys Bollard: I have listened to the hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. Jack Jones) with great interest- I should have thought that the logical conclusion to what he has said was that he would be asking for the removal of the existing tariff. I feel that those who are complaining about the tariff increase—I thought the hon. Gentleman was—ought really to be asking for the removal even of the existing tariff of 4d per lb. on tomatoes today. However, I do not think there are many hon. Members who have tomato growers

in their constituences who would care to argue that.
I support the Order very strongly indeed. I have been very concerned about the trend of events in the glasshouse industry, and in the tomato section in particular. 1 can bear out what has been said by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke). We have seen a very serious decline in the acreage of tomatoes under glass. Many of the producers are having to compete with industrial wage conditions and they find it impossible to do so.
We have an interesting balance to make. We see the rise in the general standard of living of industrial workers, and we have to be sure that the level of earnings and wages in the horticultural industry is kept on a par with that in other industries. Many of the producers are small men who have laid out a great deal of capital on their glasshouses, and owing to increased costs they find it much more difficult to maintain their production.
There are a lot of difficulties with which growers in this country have to contend. I have a particular grievance in my own part of the world, the genuine complaint which is made about the damage which is done to glasshouses by sonic bangs. This may not seem to be a factor which ought to be considered in connection with this Order, but glasshouse growers, particularly the small ones, find their glasshouses shaken up by disturbances in the upper atmosphere. This goes on every day in my constituency, and they find that they have big costs to meet to repair their glasshouses as a result of those bangs.
Hon. Members may think that this is quite irrelevant to this debate, but this is an item of cost which has to be borne; it is one of the factors which has to be met. The growers in my area find this a source of particular grievance. When they are inside their glasshouses and one of these bangs takes place the growers shake in their shoes almost as much as the glasshouses shake. I thought it proper to mention this because it is a thing about which my growers feel very strongly.
However, the main reason why I support the Order is that we just cannot afford to allow this important


industry to continue to decline in the way that it has in the last few years. Therefore, I welcome the Order, and I hope that we shall see as a result of it a turn in the fortunes of the growers and the people who work for them, and I hope that we shall see an increase in the quantity of home-grown glasshouse tomatoes.

9.36 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Holt: It has been a very revealing debate so far. I suppose this is the first time that the defence for putting up a tariff has been that an aeroplane is going through the sound barrier and breaking peoples glasshouses; and so we put an extra 2d. lb. on tomatoes.
The hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke), as usual, was honest and straightforward in his views about the horticultural industry, but I would not have thought that what he said about it would commend the Order to consumers throughout the country. What he said about the ability of consumers to pay more for things which they are used to and regard as being more or less necessities now was very true. I think a lot of them can. It has been noticeable with things like cigarettes. The prices go up, but people look upon them as necessities and go on buying them. However, that is not a really sound argument for putting up prices. That alone is not a sound argument.
The hon. and gallant Member argued about certain conditions in the Lea Valley. If what he says is true—and I have no reason to doubt it—surely there are other ways of dealing with the problem of the use of land in the Lea Valley.
I find the speech of the Minister of State rather ironic when I think of some of the speeches—very honourable speeches, I thought they were—which he made from the third bench above where he is now sitting when he was just the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, when he was consistently opposing the protectionists in his own party who wished to give protection to the cotton trade, a much larger industry than the horticultural one. He resisted those moves. He made many speeches in the House. Some of his own colleagues sitting around him did not like them very

much, but they were soundly based. His view, as I remember clearly, was that the cotton trade had to make itself efficient, that there were many sides to that issue, and that he was not prepared to advocate higher protection for the cotton industry, particularly protection against more imports from the Commonwealth.
Let us be quite clear that what we are arguing about now is not free trade or laissez-faire. It would be out of order to argue that, I should imagine. We have here an Order which puts up the tariffs from 4d. to 6d. a lb. for the early part of the summer and from 4d. to 5d. a lb. after July. That is the simple point. I really cannot say that anyone has so far advanced what would be a convincing argument to any impartial person outside. Hon. Members say simply that the horticulturists who grow tomatoes are having a bad time. Something should be done about it. There are many problems, and the Government think that the tariff should be put up. No real case has been made out.
We have been through all this before. I remind the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Peart) that in 1953 the right hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. Thorneycroft), then President of the Board of Trade, said:
We are getting rid of every physical restriction on the import of the horticultural produce covered by these Orders."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 10th December, 1960; Vol. 521, c. 2219.]
My hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield, West (Mr. Wade) made the point on that occasion that it was a very good thing to get rid of those quantitative restrictions and, if the best that the Government could do was to readjust the tariffs in the light of inflation and the change in prices as compared with before the war, then we preferred the tariff to the quantitative restrictions which existed hitherto. That was the simple point then. Tonight, we are discussing whether the tariff should go up. I seriously suggest that no case has been made for it. As several hon. Members have admitted already, the horticulture industry has been in difficulties for many years. There is really no indication that it has yet put its house in order or that it will do so.
During the months in question, imported tomatoes from the Netherlands will account for about one-sixth of the


quantity eaten in this country. Between May and August last year, the Exchequer received about £1 million as a result of the tariff. If the tariff is to go up this year from 4d. to 6d. for part of the time and from 4d. to 5d. for the rest, we can assume, roughly, if consumption continues and if the importation continues, as the hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Ely suggested it would, more or less at the same level, that the Exchequer will probably receive about £⅜ million more.
If the price of imports is to go up by that amount, one can do a little sum about the rest of the five-sixths of tomatoes consumed in this country which will be produced here. Tomatoes are now to cost the consumer about £2,250,000 more as a result of the tariff than they did in the previous year. This is what the consumer will be asked to pay because of difficulty in certain parts of the horticulture industry, notably among tomato growers.
What is being done to make tomato growing efficient? I am advised that the difficulties are partly due to the size of the units. In this country today, 5,000 of the 6,000 growers have only half an acre of glass or less, and more than half have less than a quarter of an acre. The optimum size for a modern heated unit is 2½ acres. In Holland, there are larger units. The hon. Member for Working-ton, in describing the increase in the size of the Dutch industry, looked upon it as a threat. It is, surely, a matter of great consequence to us.
The Dutch industry is growing because it is successful, because it produces economically and because it is expanding its markets. Can we really be satisfied not to have the advantage of this for our own consumers? Are we not concerned about our consumers at all? Because the industry on the Continent is growing more and more efficient than the industry in this country, must we in no way benefit from it but give even higher protection to our own industry to continue in its own inefficient way?
My whole case against this tariff increase, which is what we are discussing, is that it will do nothing to encourage the industry to put its house in order but will merely encourage it to go on in the way it is doing at present.

Major Legge-Bourke: I should be glad if the hon. Member would say what he would do when it costs £18,000 to put up an acre of glass, which is unsaleable for anything else?

Mr. Holt: I do not pretend to be a horticulturist, or even an amateur grower like the hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. Jack Jones). Hon. Gentlemen opposite must sometimes look at some of these problems from the point of view of the community as a whole. It is utterly deplorable to see the way in which time after time hon. Members have got up and thought only about the protection of the horticultural industry. Hon. Members of this House, I suggest with great humility, should be concerned about some of their own constituents who are the consumers at large. So far as the consumers are concerned, it does not matter a row of beans whether they get their tomatoes from Holland or from the horticultural industry of this country.

Mr. R. H. Turton: The Hon. Member explained to the House that the cost of this Order will come to 11d. for each consumer per year. Is that a price which he thinks the consumer should not pay in order to help their own horticultural industry?

Mr. Holt: That is all very well, but if we accept this argument of the tomato growers we could accept it for every other aspect of the horticultural industry, and why stop there? We could apply it in all industry, and then who goes on paying these subsidies? Hon. Members of the party opposite made a great song and dance recently about the cost of Government spending. They want economy. Why is all this? It is in order to leave more money in the pockets of the taxpayers, but they now want to give it away to the horticulturists, and so there is no consistency whatever about them.
I would urge the Economic Secretary to give some reasons, not just to the pressure groups on his own side who have been most active in presenting the case for the tomato growers, but to give some satisfaction to his own constituents and to the millions of consumers all over the country who are to be asked to pay this extra money.

9.49 p.m.

Mr. Douglas Marshall: In following the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Holt), who was, presumably, speaking for the Liberal Party, and who has tried to make a case against the tariff increase in this Order, I assume that, apart from this case, he is primarily interested in the philosophy, which, naturally, he has every right to believe in, that both tariffs and subsidies are wrong in both horticulture and agriculture.
I rise for a vary short period only to say "Thank you" to the Government, and to add that I am glad of the acceptance of the case for this tariff. Although the N.F.U., the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Secretary of State for Scotland have done much towards the production of this Order, I must particularly make reference to the indomitable spirit and hard work which my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke) has put in all this time on behalf of the tomato industry.
One or two hon. Members have said that the case for an increase has not been proved. If they had studied the tomato industry a little more, I am sure that they would not have felt that way. The hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. Jack Jones), who always delights us when he speaks, mentioned that he had got prizes for his tomatoes. I grow tomatoes as well, but I do not get prizes for them. Those of us who have studied the industry know that it has been going through a very difficult time and that its future was bleak.
There is a good case for the rise in the tariff for the tomato industry. If the industry is wiped out economically, we shall find that imported tomatoes will not be quite as cheap as they are now. Once the industry is held up to ransom the price of tomatoes to the consumer will be very different. It seems to me that this Order has reasserted the faith of the Government in the tariff weapon of the Government and, at the same time, has stiffened them in their attitude towards the Common Market. I was in Sweden the week-end before last, and I found that even the Swedes were very anxious about certain things which have been said lately with regard to the Six. Those of us who do not believe in the Six but believe in the Seven are glad to

see the strengthening of the tariff contained in this Order.

9.52 p.m.

Mr. Edward Short (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Central): I do not represent any tomato growers, but I represent about 30,000 housewives, and I think that their voice as well as the voice of the tomato growers should be heard.
There is already a tariff of 4d. a lb. on tomatoes. We are concerned with holding the balance between the producer and the consumer. I should have thought that to increase the tariff by 50 per cent., as is proposed by this Order, is to tip the balance too much in favour of the producer as against the consumer. I should have thought that the Horticulture Act would have been regarded as an alternative to increased tariffs and not as an addition.
Broadly, the agricultural industry is the most heavily subsidised industry. It is far more heavily subsidised than any nationalised industry. This is a matter of arithmetic and simple figures. What we are doing here is to call upon the taxpayer to subsidise the industry twice over—once by way of direct subsidy and again by way of increased tariff.
I am a Socialist, and I am more proud of being a Socialist than of almost anything else. I believe that a country ought to plan and allocate its resources. I believe, equally, that in a sensible world community the countries of the world ought to plan and allocate their resources and that each country ought to grow the things that it can best grow. That is my basic philosophy. It is ridiculous to say that British tomato growers cannot improve the efficiency of their production and distribution to a point where they can compete with growers in Holland. If it were Japan, I could understand it, but Holland has a comparable standard of living with our own. There is no question whatever of unfair competition because of the disparity between the two standards of living.

Major Legge-Bourke: I know that the hon. Member has been a soldier and I am sure that he would be the first to agree that war is apt to upset theory, however good it may be. Does he not realise that one of the troubles in the Lea Valley, in particular, is that production was deliberately encouraged during


the war for obvious reasons and that one cannot turn it over suddenly to something else?

Mr. Short: That would have been a good argument to use in 1946 or 1947, but the hon. and gallant Member must remember that the war has been over fifteen years. I should have thought that we should have adjusted ourselves by now.
This is a matter really between Holland and Britain, two countries with a comparable standard of living. Therefore, there is no question of unfair competition on the ground of disparity in the standard of living. The Order calls upon the housewife to subsidise the inefficiency of the tomato growers in production and distribution—to the extent in production of £2¼ million a year, and that is not good enough. I could understand a tariff the purpose of which was to equate standards of living, but I cannot understand a tariff the purpose of which is to equate standards of efficiency, which is the purpose of this one.
I can only regard this Order as a further burden placed by the inefficiency of the farming community on the people whom I represent, and because of that I take a very dim view of it.

9.56 p.m.

Sir Richard Glyn: I shall be very brief in my remarks at this hour, but I feel that I must, first, congratulate the Government on their wise and timely decision and, at the same time, repudiate some of the harsh and unjust criticisms which have been launched from the benches opposite against tomato growers and horticulturists generally in Britain.

Mr. Peart: I hope that the hon. Member will qualify that by saying, "from one or two individuals" and from the Liberal Party. We officially support the Order.

Sir R. Glyn: I am always most anxious to be fair, but I think that it is within the recollection of the House that the criticisms have come from speakers on the benches opposite. I believe that the majority of speakers opposite have been, on the whole, critical. I do not say that speeches from Opposition Front Benchers were. I repeat, however, that

the harsh criticisms which I had in mind came from speakers on the benches opposite.

Mr. Peart: One of my hon. Friends, the hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Central (Mr. Short) made some constructive remarks, but did not oppose the Order. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. Jack Jones) did. I hope that the hon. Member will not misrepresent the official Opposition. It is true that an attack came from the Liberals.

Sir R. Glyn: It may be that the hon. Member is better able to ascertain the official policy of his party than we are able to ascertain it from this side of the House, but there has been some harsh criticism from the benches opposite.
Horticulture is not subsidised very much and until recently was not subsidised at all. It is now lightly subsidised owing to the Government's recent action, but it relies on tariffs for its protection, which it needs, as I will shortly show. The hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. Jack Jones) suggested that the need for the increased tariff was due to inefficiency and that word has been mentioned a number of times.
The hon. Member said that there was inefficiency in heating. This, of course, is a crucial point in tomato production, but in my constituency, not long ago, a large firm of tomato growers went into liquidation as a result of the very difficult season we have just gone through, coupled with the imports which had been troubling the whole of our tomato producers, and that in spite of the fact that the firm had an almost brand-new heating system which had to be sold virtually for scrap.

Mr. Jack Jones: Would the hon. Member not agree that where the inefficiency occurred was in the use of the square feet of space in that area at other times of the year for other purposes? The case which the hon. Member quotes from his own constituency proves my point. Equipment of that kind should be used efficiently for other purposes during the periods when tomatoes are not being grown.

Sir R. Glyn: This was used most efficiently all the year round, and I will tell the hon. Gentleman, if he contains


himself for a moment, how it was that this calamity overtook it. It was more than two and a half acres in size. I went into this matter with some care.
The real difficulty is the cost of labour in this country vis-à-vis the cost of labour in Holland. Members must realise that in this country horticulturists are governed by the law, just as agricultural employers are, and are liable to prosecution if they do not pay full overtime for long hours worked when the season is at its height, even if the workers are willing to accept less wages. In Holland, by an arrangement which my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke) has pointed out, this is equalised out at a certain level payment throughout the year, which means that no overtime is paid at all. This is a very serious point.
I will not go into details, but I must deal with the suggestion that a tariff is not in the interests of housewives. We must regard the difference in the short-term and the long-term view. If British housewives were to be allowed to benefit by cheap foreign tomatoes for one or two seasons while they are available, and then the foreign suppliers switched to other markets, then they would be left on the rocks if the British tomato growers had been abandoned by the Government and driven into liquidation by cheap foreign imports.

Mr. Holt: The hon. Member said that he would not go into detail. I suggest that if he has details the House would be glad to hear them, because people want to be fair about this. Can he tell us the difference between wages which had to be paid in the case he instanced in his own constituency and those paid in Holland? What proportion are wages to the cost of tomato production?

Sir R. Glyn: I do not wish to go into too much detail, but this was the crucial difference in the cost of production by this large and very well managed firm and its rivals abroad. I now come to what the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Holt) said.

Major Legge-Bourke: The F.A.O./ E.C.E. Report for 1957–58 shows that the British labour force is paid 32 per cent. higher than the Dutch.

Sir R. Glyn: I am much obliged to my hon. Friend. I do not want to weary the House with too many figures, but it was said by the hon. Member for Bolton, West, who was speaking for the Liberal Party, that it "does not matter a row of beans where the consumer gets his tomatoes from". I deprecate that point of view, and this side of the House cannot agree with it. We have had many examples in the last year or two. I should be out of order if I went into those in detail, but if we left the British producer to the mercy of these foreign imports, which are often subsidised, the British consumer would be left high and dry if the British producer were forced into liquidation. It is to protect the consumer against that position and to protect the housewife against that unfortunate risk that it is right that our horticulture should be protected.
In 1954, the Liberal Party said that it was a choice of evils and agreed that it preferred tariffs to quotas. The House also preferred tariffs as a policy to protect horticulturists. In this case, the tomato growers sadly needed protection and I support the Government in their sensible and courageous action in raising the tariff.

10.5 p.m.

Mr. John Wells: I will not detain the House for more than a minute, but there has been a feeling about that the only tomatoes grown in the vicinity of London come from the Lea Valley. Kent is probably the leading horticultural county, and we are extremely proud of our efficient horticultural industry.
A great deal has been said by a number of hon. Gentlemen, although not from the Opposition Front Bench, about horticultural inefficiency, but every year we in Kent enjoy more and more efficiency in the horticultural industry.
The hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. Jack Jones) spoke about new varieties of tomatoes which are being grown—as I understood the implication—by amateurs only. I rebut that statement because our growers in Kent are growing some of the most up-to-date varieties, and they have some of the most up-to-date equipment.

Mr. Jack Jones: They are doing all right.

Mr. Wells: Yes the horticulturists of Kent are doing well.

Mr. Jones: They do not need any subsidy.

Mr. Wells: They need a subsidy for a number of reasons. First, several hon. Members have referred to the small units in which they work. If these smal units are to continue to get the best possible use of their equipment, it is essential that they get a fair return, and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, North (Sir Richard Glyn) said, they must be able to pay their workers the legal standard. I am sure that hon. Members in all parts of the House realise that.
The hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Central (Mr. Short) said that agriculture was the most heavily subsidised industry, but that is not true. For the first time we are beginning to enjoy a modest subsidy which we hope will be extended in future. The horticultural industry in Kent is in great need of this support.

Mr. Short: The subsidy was envisaged as an alternative to increased tariffs, not as an addition to them.

Mr. Wells: The hon. Member for New-castle-upon-Tyne, Central also said that each country should grow the produce most suited to it, but again it has been brought to the attention of the House that many acres of glass were put up during the war years not only in the Lea Valley but in various areas surrounding London.
It was said, particularly at the beginning of the debate, that British growers do not make the best use of their glass outside the tomato season. I rebut that statement. Our horticulturists in Kent maintain full production of one crop or another throughout the year. They get the best possible use of their equipment.
I therefore welcome the subsidy— [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I mean the tariff. I hope that we will see further support for agriculture in future.

10.9 p.m.

Mr. Charles Loughlin: I rise to speak for a very short period of time, because it is essential that hon. Members on the benches opposite should not claim credit for something which they themselves have never carried out. Since I have been a Member of this House, agitation on behalf of the

horticultural section of agriculture has been undertaken more by this side of House than by the other side.

Mr. Frederick Willey: Hon. Members opposite should read the proceedings in Committee on the Horticulture Bill.

Mr. Loughlin: When the Horticulture Bill was considered in Committee, the people who were concerned with the interests of the horticultural industry were all on this side. I have attended meetings of the National Farmers' Union Horticultural Committee in my constituency and it has constantly criticised this Government for their mishandling of the horticultural industry. Deputations have been received in this House from the various sectors of the horticultural industry.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Major Sir William Anstruther-Gray): I am reluctant to interrupt the hon. Member, but we are now dealing purely with the Import Duties (General) (No. 5) Order and not with the industry in general.

Mr. Loughlin: I am sorry, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, but I did refer to tomato growers in the horticultural industry. It is easy for hon. Members opposite to convey the entirely wrong impression that hon. Members on this side of the House are not concerned with tomato growers and horticulturists. It is essential that it should be said clearly that we are as much concerned as hon. Members opposite, if not more so, with the tomato growers and the results of the Order.

10.11 p.m.

Mr. Frederick Willey: Attracted as I am by dialectic controversy, I come now as oil on troubled waters, although I will permit myself one possible controversial reflection, in passing, namely, that it seems that agriculture does better when it falls under the Board of Trade than when it is dealt with by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.
I want to touch broadly upon the theme which has run through our discussion—the question of subsidising agriculture or aiding it by way of tariff. I should have thought that there was an arguable case for redressing the balance against the primary producer. We should recognise this, as most other countries do. I know that some hon. Members


opposite are allergic to it, because it is a measure of planning, but the attraction of the formula is that we are faced either with an increased retail price or a subsidised price—and the subsidised price contains with it an element to which people contribute to it according to their means.
In the case of horticultural production, there is a further difficulty. According to their distance from the equator countries suffer seasonable disadvantages which are difficult to compensate for by way of subsidy. This is a justification for using the tariff as a means of protecting this kind of industry. Unless we take steps to protect our domestic producer he will never obtain the best market, because more southerly countries will get their produce on to the market before he can. We have this measure of protection in order to strike not an exact balance, but a rough one. As the hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke) knows, he and I are fellow Socialists in this matter, although I realise that he has difficulties with his hon. Friends. We think that it would be better to resort to more direct physical control.
I agree at once that if we are to have a proper discussion of the matter we should have the fullest information before us. Before the war we had the I.D.A.C. procedure, which gave us this information as well as a public discussion and a political decision. I am greatly obliged for the information that has been brought to my attention, both for and against an increase in the tariff. Unfortunately, I do not think that the information is complete. The Government do not reveal the representations made to them and the grounds on which they make their decisions. I think that they should do so.
Last year, when we were seriously tempted to attack the Government, it is recorded in the OFFICIAL REPORT that I regarded this as quasi-judicial. We had a general discussion about rising tariff levels, and any subsequent adjustment to be made, unless it is a general increase in the tariff, is really quasi-judicial. That is why the hon. Member for Dorset, North (Sir Richard Glyn) was so outrageously wrong in referring to the courageous action of the Government.

This will prejudice the Government in the light of developments in Europe. We regard this as quasi-judicial on the balance of the arguments. We want to know the criteria and the arguments deployed. That is the real difficulty which we have to face. I do not wish to create unnecessary controversy, but I should like the Government seriously to consider this matter.

Major Legge-Bourke: Will the hon. Gentleman say why it is wrong to give the Government credit for being courageous? Would not he agree that it involves the Government standing up strongly for this country against some of the Common Market countries?

Mr. Willey: We have touched on this subject before in debates and we are likely to do so again in the near future. I hope that the Minister will agree that as this is a difficult decision, taken on the balance of arguments presented to him, and on known criteria, it would be better if the Government rested their case there rather than imported possible political considerations which might involve them in difficulties regarding European negotiations. Because we have a decision which has been referred to as favourable, I do not think that we should prejudice it. Therefore, I hope that the Government will consider this matter. I appreciate the difficulties of not fully comprehending the arguments deployed by either side and I recognise the difficulties of the Government. I hope that in future the Government will consider a better presentation of their conclusions than we have had on this occasion.

10.18 p.m.

Mr. Erroll: We have had an agreeable debate and there has been a wide measure of agreement. There has also been the spice of controversy. I like to think that the tomato growers of this country may read what has been said and realise that the House has taken a great interest in their problems and difficulties. We have also had the benefit of learning that not all the tomatoes come from the Lea Valley. There are tomato growers in Cornwall as well as in Kent and in other parts of the country—

Mr. William Ross: And in Scotland, too.

Mr. Erroll: I am grateful for that reminder—in Scotland as well.
My hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, North (Sir Richard Glyn) was kind enough to say that the Government's decision was a courageous one. Naturally we all like to be told that we are courageous but I must point out that our decision was based on the facts as they were put to us and it would, I think, have been very difficult for us to arrive at any other conclusion; although, of course, it would have been possible to arrive at no conclusion at all and to do nothing. At least we made up our minds and we have come to this House to ask for approval of this Order, and so to that extent perhaps we are entitled to be called courageous.
I pay due regard to the fact that the hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) said we were not giving enough information. But on looking at the facts, and bearing in mind what I said in my opening speech, I think hon. Members will agree that we have struck the right balance between the interests of the growers and the interests of the consumers.
I should like to remind the hon. Gentleman that the I.D.A.C. reports issued before the war were in fact very brief summary documents and probably contained a good deal less than was contained in my own opening speech tonight. It would not help very much if we were to revert to a form of reporting such as he has suggested.
The question of whether we are unduly helping the growers or not, as was suggested by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Central (Mr. Short) can best be resolved by appreciating the fact that production has been declining. When operating in a contracting market it is very hard to take bold vigorous steps. It is necessary to give members of the industry a breathing space to consider whether they can modernise, where appropriate, and re-organise their marketing methods and so on. During that breathing space they will be able to draw on the various forms of assistance made possible under the Horticulture Act. In that way I think that we shall ensure that we can have British grown tomatoes in our shops and on our dining-room tables. I think that is what we all want to see.
I cannot agree with the hon. Gentleman the Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Holt), who seemed to suggest that we should be content to accept imported

tomatoes whenever they are cheaper than the home grown product. I think that he was very well answered by my hon. Friend the Member for Bodmin (Mr. Marshall) who dealt very well with his argument.

Mr. Holt: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will indicate to the House how he reconciles his attitude on this as consistent with his attitude in refusing to give protection to the cotton industry.

Mr. Erroll: The answer is very simple. It is because horticulture is a different type of industry from a manufacturing industry. We are here dealing with an entirely different form of product from factory industrial production.
The question of the interests of the consumer arises. I think it was the hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Central who referred particularly to the fact that we all have constituents, as if we did not know that already. [An HON. MEMBER: "Some hon. Members forget them."] Nevertheless, they are very much in my mind at all times. Whenever I am trying to make up my mind in the Board of Trade I try to think of how the decision would sound in Altrincham and Sale, which may account for the fact that we make so many sensible decisions in the Board of Trade.
The best interests of consumers would not necessarily be served if they were subject to all the fluctuations in price which would inevitably arise if they were solely dependent on imported produce. Secondly, a very small increase in the tariff will give them, we hope, a steady supply of the home-grown product while making only a very small difference in the cost of living to the consumer. A penny in the £ increase in the price of tomatoes represents only ·03 of a point on the cost of living index for all items and only ·08 of a point on the food index. This tariff, which I ask the House to approve, represents only a very small imposition on the housewife in return for which she will in our belief have very substantial benefits accruing in the years to come. I hope, therefore, that the House will approve the Order.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the Import Duties (General) (No. 5) Order, 1960 (S.I., 1960, No. 811), dated 6th May, 1960, a copy of which was laid before this House on 10th May, be approved.

Orders of the Day — CONSOLIDATION, &c, BILLS

Mr. John Rankin discharged from the Joint Committee; Mr. McInnes added.— [Mr. J. E. B. Hill.]

Orders of the Day — DISABLED PERSONS (MOTOR CARS)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. J. E. B. Hill.]

10.25 p.m.

Mr. Ness Edwards: I was moved to request this Adjournment debate by an incident which happened to me some months ago, when a lady visited me to talk to me about her son. Her son had had a brilliant career in the grammar school. He had reached the age of 19, and he then contracted poliomyelitis. After some time we were able to do something for him. We were able to get him a tricycle and get him a job. This had gone on for about two years.
The lady told me that the boy was her only child. She said that when he goes out he has to go out alone. He makes no social contacts. Sometimes when he is sitting in the house she says to him, "Why do you not go out?" She says that the boy looks at her as if he is reproaching her for having brought him into the world.
That brought home to me the tremendous tragedy which exists in the case of people disabled in this fashion. This is a young man, with the limited facilities which the present Minister provides for him, who is doomed to travel life alone. With all these shouts of, "You have never had it so good", it is a hollow mockery to treat the boy in the way he is being treated.
Having had that experience, I began to look at the problem on a wider basis. I asked the miners' secretary in South Wales, Mr. Dan Evans, to tell me what the position was about the men injured in industry. He told me that about 100 miners in South Wales alone are using these wretched tricycles. Some of them are "Bevin boys". They did great work for the country during the war. They did what we wanted them to do, and they are now condemned to

these wretched tricycles, to travel alone, to travel not in safety but in very great danger.
I was reminded by the secretary of the South Wales miners of the plight of Evan Morris, a famous fighter, who was injured in the pit and whose tricycle caught fire on a mountain road. If no one had come along, he would have been burnt to a cinder, as the tricycle was burnt to a cinder. He was saved from it by passers-by.
I have noticed men sitting in these shabby, cheap-looking tricycles, which are about the cheapest thing we could provide for them, on the lonely mountain roads, by themselves, absolutely cut off from social contact It is about time we did something about it. The Minister himself has sparked off a new agitation by his decision to provide two-seater cars for the war disabled and replace the old tricycles. One applauds this decision. Why cannot this be extended to other classes of persons in the same category?
Why is it that the man who was disabled as a soldier is to have different treatment from the person who worked in London on war work and who often suffered greater danger from bomb damage than some people in the regiments? Why is he to be excluded from this beneficial step taken by the Minister? During the war we were all on war work. Those of us who had to live in London during the war and come to the House know the dangers to which we were exposed. They were far greater than those of some people in other parts of the country on Service work. Yet those injured during the bombing of London or Coventry or other cities are to be excluded from this advantage which is now conferred by the Minister.
I went into St. James's Park at lunch-time. In the park I saw one of these wretched tricycles. It was black with a varnished sail cloth, a cheap-looking thing. I saw the man being helped out of the tricycle in order to sit on a deck chair. What about the man who has no one to meet him in the park or assist him from his tricycle? I wish the hon Lady would keep this very much in mind. I know she has great qualities. I am wondering why she has allowed this condition to continue for so long.
What prevents her from doing this? Is it a question of cost? On merit there can be no question. I notice that the cost spread over a number of years would be an additional £2½ million. I find that the additional annual cost, once the change had been effected, would be roughly £1 million a year. Those are figures she has given. I should have thought cost was not an insuperable barrier. I found the Minister's reply much more explicit than that of the hon. Lady. The hon. and gallant Member for Norwood (Sir J. Smyth) said:
The Parliamentary Secretary has consistently replied to questions on this subject by saying that she was debarred by the terms of the Act from treating such people in the same way as the war disabled.
The Minister replied:
I do not think that my hon. Friend has ever said that it was an insuperable barrier.
He was most complimentary and said:
What she has done, with her customary candour and conscientious clarity, has been to point out that there is a possible legal difficulty which relates to the question whether a small car which can take passengers and which can be driven by somebody else can properly be said to come within the wording of Section 3 (1, b) of the National Health Service Act. that is to say, within:
'medical, nursing and other services require at or for the purposes of hospitals …"' —[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd May, 1960; Vol. 622. c. 694.]
Is it a legal difficulty which the hon. Lady has in mind? The Minister is much more careful in his use of language. He says there is only a possible legal difficulty. When he, a trained lawyer, a barrister I believe, says there is only a possible legal difficulty, does that not raise the presumption that he really does not feel the legal position is preventing him from doing what we request him to do?
Perhaps the hon. Lady will take this into account. If under that form of words it is possible to provide a three-wheeled vehicle and a three-wheeled vehicle is provided, why is it impossible to add another wheel? Is it less of an appliance because it has four wheels? If she finds that a difficulty, does it become less of an appliance if it has two seats instead of one? I am afraid that the hon. Lady has been relying upon a barrier which does not exist.
I find that when we have sought to raise this matter in the past we have

been told that it would mean a change of legislation. It does not mean that at all Even the Minister does not say that it means that. He says that it is only a possible legal difficulty. He did not say in his reply that it required a change of legislation, but the hon. Lady in an Adjournment debate last November seemed to rely upon that completely. It would perhaps have been far more honourable if the Minister had himself come here to defend his position rather than the Parliamentary Secretary, and I am not saying that with any disrespect to the hon. Lady.
The situation is a national disgrace. There are 6,000 people who are disabled is such a way that they have not the means of locomotion, and we have condemned them to travel alone in what I regard as the cheapest form of transport that the Minister could find.
The Minister has at last succumbed to the pressure that has been brought upon him from both sides of the House to do something for the war disabled. But have we not reached a strange position when one man with one type of disablement is told, "Because you got it in such a way you shall have a car", but another man with exactly the same disability is told, "Because you got it in a different way while serving your country you shall not have it"? There is no humanity or justice in this.
I warn the hon. lady, and she can warn her right hon. and learned Friend, that they will get no peace until this position is put right. We shall come back to it time after time to see to it that the disabled people of the country are treated decently. At the moment they are being treated on the cheap. I beg the hon Lady to do one of two things, to provide either a two-seater tricycle or a two-seater car for every one of the persons in this condition.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Warrington (Dr. Summerskill) has been pressing for this for a very long time, and I am sure that in what I say I carry with me her and my other right hon. and hon. Friends and most hon. Members on the other side of the House. I hope, therefore, that we shall get a reply from the hon. Lady which will give us some hope. I repeat my warning: we shall come back


to this time after time until we have made the Ministry bend and do the decent thing.

10.39 p.m.

Dr. Edith Summerskill: I support what has been said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Ness Edwards). There is surely an anomalous position here. During the war the late Mr. Ernest Bevin equated certain men in industry with men in the Armed Forces by saying that if they were prepared to do certain jobs they would be exempt from military service.
My right hon. Friend has mentioned the miners. The miner has one of the dirtiest jobs in the country. He works in dark, confined conditions and is vulnerable to nystagmus, pneumoconiosis and injury in the pits. If a miner is severely injured in the pits he is denied a car, whereas if a Service man, perhaps stationed in a pleasant country town or district, is injured, not by a bomb but perhaps in an accident with a motor lorry which he is driving during his war service, he is entitled to a car. It is a most curious position, inhuman, unjust, and quite illogical.
My right hon. Friend mentioned the fact that this man was punished because he had to be alone, and because when he went out he could not take anyone with him. I would remind the House of the man's wife. This woman has been called upon to work much harder than she would have done if her husband had not been injured. She has been called upon to be a housewife and nurse for the rest of her life, and has been confined to the house much more than she would have been had her husband been normal. She is just the wife who needs a little relaxation, some holiday, some change from the appalling conditions which she has to suffer day after day for the rest of her life. When there is an opportunity of some holiday at present, she, who probably needs it more than any other member of the household, apart from the invalid, is condemned to stay at home. I ask the hon. Lady to consider that.
I remind my right hon. Friend that the point I pressed was cars for men disabled in the Services, but equally I join my right hon. Friend in his plea for the other disabled.

10.41 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health (Miss Edith Pitt): In reply to this debate, perhaps I may briefly explain that the service transport for disabled people ranges from the provision of chairs, of which there are about 57,000 on issue in England and Wales, to powered tricycles and cars. This matter is not often discussed in the House, and so I am very happy to reply to the debate which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Ness Edwards) has raised tonight. When I say the matter is not often discussed, I must add that I am, of course, aware that there is considerable interest in it among hon. and right hon. Gentlemen. I know that from the volume of correspondence which comes to me about their constituency cases.
Last November my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Miss Vickers) raised on the Adjournment the matter of the supply of tricycles, and we had a full discussion on the service and the criteria we use. For that reason I shall not take up time tonight with the criteria, except briefly to say that a disabled person, whether war disabled or under the National Health Service, may be eligible for a power-propelled tricycle if he has suffered amputation of both legs, at least one above the knee, or suffers such defect of the locomotor system as to all intents and purposes to be unable to walk, or is similarly but slightly less severely disabled, with very limited walking ability, and needs a machine to get to and from work.
On cars, which is really the subject of the debate tonight, only war pensioners get cars. Up to now only the most severely disabled have been eligible for them under the scheme introduced in 1948. My right hon. and learned Friend announced on 4tlh April his decision to extend the war pensioners car scheme, and we hope that the additional cars will begin to be available in a month or two's time. At present nearly 1,800 war pensioners have cars and over 1,700 have tricycles.
When we come to the National Health Service—

Mr. Ness Edwards: Would the hon. Lady inform the House on what authority the Minister of Health provides these cars for war disabled people?

Miss Pitt: Under the Royal Warrant.

Mr. Ness Edwards: Which one?

Miss Pitt: The Royal Warrant is here in the House. I will show it to the right hon. Gentleman before we leave the House tonight. I think it is the 1949 one.

Mr. Ness Edwards: I do not want to take the hon. Lady's time, but I want to say that we have made reference to the Library and the research department there, to try to find out from the Ministry this information, and we have been able to find no authority at all for what the Minister is doing, except under the National Health Service Act.

Miss Pitt: I do not think the Royal Warrant specifically says "cars", but it is very wide in its terms, and it is under that power that my Minister, and his predecessors, including those of the party of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, have provided cars for the war disabled.
As I was explaining, when we come to the National Health Service the figures are very much greater than the number of war pensioners affected, as one would naturally expect.
A total of 12,773 National Health Service patients in Great Britain have tricycles and the number has risen steadily over the years. The annual cost of the tricycle service in England and Wales, excluding the cost of salaries of staff, is now about £1¾ million. The tricycle has often been criticised, perhaps by those who tend to overlook what it is designed to do and concentrate their criticism on what it does not do. It has been described in the House as "very antiquated" and the right hon. Member for Caerphilly has referred tonight to "wretched" tricycles, which I think a most unwarranted criticism. The machines have been improved over the years and are efficient machines for their purpose.
The old open "motorised invalid chairs" have been superseded by all-weather machines which are, in effect, small saloon cars with steel or glass fibre bodies, hydraulic brakes and controls, efficient engines and modern suspension units. They are specially designed to give adequate space for the driver and for a folding push-chair, and

for ease of control and of access. Frequently they are specially modified to meet individual needs.
The right hon. Member for Caerphilly mentioned two specific cases which he kindly told us about two days ago and I have looked them up. One was the case of Mr. Morris who had a fire in his tricycle in 1952. It was caused by a split petrol feed pipe, which could have occurred in any motor vehicle. He suffered shock but not physical injury, and a few days later he asked for a replacement, which shows that he was not afraid of using a tricycle again. He was issued with a new tricycle and he used it until he died.
The boy whom the right hon. Member mentioned was Geoffrey Powell, who was supplied with a new tricycle in 1956, enclosed but with a soft top. In 1958 he complained of inadequate weather protection and asked for a tricycle with a hard top. It was found that the reason why the rain came in was that there was a large hole in the rear window. This was repaired and the tricycle is still in use. We have no record of recent complaint, but if the right hon. Gentleman wants me to look into this case I will.

Mr. Ness Edwards: I am not complaining about this particular tricycle and I am sorry that the hon. Lady has mentioned a name, but I complain that he has to travel by himself even if the tricycle is perfect.

Miss Pitt: I will come to that point.

Mr. Ness Edwards: That is the point of the debate.

Miss Pitt: The right hon. Gentleman is very critical, but I am sure that he agrees that the tricycle gives a valuable service to the disabled man. The chairman of one of the organisations which is interested in bigger machines recently told me that the tricycle service here had no parallel. In a supplementary question on 14th December, the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) referred to the Invalid Tricycle Association's tremendous appreciation of the benefits conferred on its members. The right hon. Member for Caerphilly says that these people are cut off, but in fact the tricycle provides them with some mobility. They are able to go out to football matches, to work


and to maintain their contacts. But the tricycle is not designed to carry a passenger who could give help and companionship and I realise that that is a point which the right hon. Member has very much in mind.
Recognising this, we said in our manifesto:
Those disabled in the service of our country will remain the subject of our special care. Particular attention will be given to providing more suitable vehicles for the badly disabled.
This passage has been misinterpreted by many to mean that it was intended that all disabled persons, war pensioners and National Health Service patients, should have more suitable vehicles.

Mr. Ness Edwards: Did not the party opposite intend that?

Miss Pitt: If the sentence is read in its context the meaning is clear. Successive Governments are agreed that war pensioners should have preference and priority in our social services. The right hon. Member for Caerphilly said that all should be treated alike. The right hon. Lady the Member for Warrington (Dr. Summerskill) said it was inhuman, unjust and illogical not to give the same benefits to all disabled people. But, as I have explained, it was their own party and their own Minister of Pensions who, in 1949, decided that certain war pensioners should have cars, in other words, continuing the preferential treatment which successive Governments have given.
On 4th April, my right hon. and learned Friend announced that he and the Secretary of State had decided to implement the promise to provide more suitable vehicles by providing small cars for those war pensioners disabled in the service of their country who are eligible for Government power-propelled tricycles. Answering a Question on 2nd May, my right hon. and learned Friend estimated that the additional capital cost of the proposals would be about £200,000, and the additional maintenance cost would be about £80,000 a year over the years. The figure of capital cost takes account of the cost of the tricycles we would otherwise have to buy over the years to replace the tricycles now in use.
I think hon. Members will be interested to know that in our calcula-

tions in regard to war pensioners, we assumed that some would prefer to keep their tricycles, and the replies we are receiving to our letters inquiring whether war pensioners want cars indicate that some would rather not have them.
I come now to the legal powers, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred. War pensioners, as I have said, have their vehicles under the Royal Warrant powers. There has been a good deal of discussion in exchanges on supplementary questions in the House about the power to provide cars under the National Health Service Act, and that is one of the main points tonight. The right hon. Gentleman quoted what the Minister said in answer to a supplementary question, and I shall not take time by repeating it. The view taken by the legal department of my Ministry is roughly this. With some straining of the language of the Section, it can be held that a tricycle has a connection with hospital treatment and that its provision is a hospital purpose. It can be regarded as an appliance for a disabled man receiving hospital services, akin to artificial limbs or crutches.
It seems to us, however, that there is a great distinction between an invalid tricycle and a car in the context of Part II of the National Health Service Act. The use of a car would, in substance, be a welfare service not limited to medical needs or the treatment of the patient himself. It would provide not merely transport for the patient but transport for his family and friends as well. Sympathetic though one may be, we do not think that this is covered by the present powers. This is not insuperable, as my right hon. and learned Friend made clear, if Parliament decided that such a service should be provided, but it would probably need amending legislation.
There are subsidiary legal points to be taken into account, but I certainly have no time to develop them now. The question of legal powers is only part of the problem. As I have said, there are differing views, but it is not for the House to decide what a Statute means once it is enacted. That falls within the province of the courts. The question whether cars should or should not be provided for the disabled generally is, however, a matter for Parliament to discuss, and. as my right hon. and learned Friend has said,


if it were necessary so to do, it would be possible at some time to amend the statutory provision.
The main question is whether the provision of vehicles for the disabled generally is a development which is desirable and of sufficient priority. It would be a costly development, as the right hon. Gentleman said. He quoted the figures which my right hon. and learned Friend gave to the House. Those were based on assumptions which it was not possible to develop fully in a supplementary answer. Various assumptions were made in the figures, which were a broad estimate and did not take account of the eventual and uncertain returns from the sale of old cars. A scheme introduced now would be spread over eight years to get full value from existing tricycles, and the capital cost would be greater if the period were short and usable tricycles had to be scrapped. There are many other points which arise on this question of cost but, plainly, I have not time to develop them.
I am not without sympathy for the point which has been raised. There is a

legal difficulty. There is the matter of cost and there are the other claims on the Health Service. There must be few who would not wish us to widen our categories of eligibility for tricycles, though I think that hon. Members do not always appreciate the financial implications of the requests they make. To provide cars for the disabled generally is a development which would have to be considered in the context of its initial and continuing cost against all the other claims for the development of our services. It would be a major development, and, while we fully understand the case for making it, we have made no commitment beyond the commitment in regard to war pensioners, and it is a development which we have not felt able to contemplate.

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at five minutes to Eleven o'clock.